The Voice of Treason

Our city’s mayor has expressed a desire to appoint school board members, explaining that the failure of our local school district to do its job has “reached crisis proportions” and the time has come to take reform seriously. To support his argument, he claims that giving the mayor the authority to appoint these people is the model for cities all over the country. It’s how it’s done in places like Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York - and those systems work. Uh…they do?

The mayor is absolutely correct when he says our school district has failed miserably. The drop out rate is at 52% and companies are leaving the state and going elsewhere to expand because they aren’t convinced this state’s employees have the skills required to do the jobs. Well, now that’s a humiliation, wouldn’t you say?

He’s also correct when he says there’s been no accountability. These people are voted in and then they don’t do their jobs. Um, isn’t that when we the voters come along and vote them out?

That’s the problem, claims our mayor. People aren’t voting in these school board elections. Hell, they’re not voting in any elections. Voter turnout is always dismal. Does this mean the mayor gets to appoint senators, too?

The other dubious part of this deal is that the mayor is a Democrat; hence, the Democrats will control the schools. Well, hell, they already control the schools - that’s the problem. The mayor also points out that someday there will be a Republican mayor, and he or she will appoint the school board members. A Republican mayor? In this town? Yeah, right.

There has been tremendous growth, yet no new schools have been built in the areas where they’re most needed. The voters keep giving the district more money, but there are still no new schools. There is, however, a major renovation going on in the administration offices for the district. All the money has gone to that project; now the district is calling for another tax hike if we want to see those schools constructed.

I can see where the mayor’s going with this, but we currently have a governor who hands out appointments the way Ronald Reagan handed out Jelly Bellies. Odd, but the city next door just had a mayoral election and turnout was impressive. Their school system seems to be functional, too.

I say the mayor has enough to do. Let the voters continue to decide who should be on the school board. Chances are nothing will change but, eventually, parents who actually give a damn will move and start paying property taxes in that city next door.

No, not Cheney. Morris. When I heard that Paul Tagliabue had resigned as NFL Commissioner, I immediately thought of Dick Morris. Could he possibly believe that Condi Rice, who covets the job, would leave her post as Secretary of State and turn her back on a run for the presidency?

Not to worry. Dick is smarter than that, and so is Condi. Football can wait. And, many years from now, after Condi and Rudy finish their work in the Oval Office, perhaps former President Giuliani can retire into that job Bud Selig’s been languishing in since 1998.

Just picture it. There will be peace in the world and the Cubs in the World Series. Hey, ya gotta have a dream.

The third anniversary of the war in Iraq approaches and I know this because I’m hearing about the upcoming protests. Our Public Access channel is urging everyone to get out and “make a lot of noise.” I purposely stayed indoors this weekend because I didn’t want to encounter one of these little gatherings. They tend to spring up near the university and they muck up traffic.

Personally, I do not like participating in these events. It’s not just because, after three years, I still support the war; it’s because I don’t like the idea of pulling much-needed law enforcers away from the places they really should be. I live in a state that consistently appears on the list of the top ten most dangerous states in America. This year we’re number three!

A source of pride, no doubt, for our residents. We’re always happy when we’re recognized as an actual state in the union. I’m sure our Department of Tourism can build a whole campaign around this new honor. Come visit our state and be assaulted! Robbed! Carjacked! Raped! Murdered! Oh, and we also have mountains and rivers!

There are days when a hike along the banks of the Euphrates sounds more appealing.

Did I just hear that outdoor smoking has been banned in Los Angeles? Okay, technically, it’s
Calabasas - a town that’s trying to win a prize for being the first virtually smoke-free city in the country. Fine. Frankly, I’d rather breathe cigarette fumes than Southern California air, but that’s just me.

But Northern California has nothing to be smug about, either. For years, San Francisco has denied it has smog. If the filth is anywhere between Hillsborough and Marin, it’s officially “haze.” The South Bay, on the other hand, is more honest about its air quality. Good thing, because it would be hard to deny a problem. One of the last times I landed at the airport in San Jose, I do what I always do when I’m in San Jose. I looked for the foothills to get my bearings — and they weren’t there. An especially “hazy” day.

I haven’t lived in the Bay Area since 1995, but even then it was hard to be a smoker. I never acquired the habit myself, but I tend to socialize with people who have. T and I used to go to baseball games and, if memory serves, there were designated areas for those who had the addiction. Funny, if you abuse heroin, you have a disease that’s out of your control. If you smoke tobacco, you’re a weak-willed, spineless, inconsiderate, polluting miscreant with an addiction problem. One of these addicts was almost physically attacked during a Yankees game at the Oakland Coliseum when he inadvertently lit up.

“He’s smoking! Excuse me, excuse me! That man is smoking!!!”

“He’s got a cigarette!”

“Someone needs to make him put that thing out!”

“Get someone over here quick!”

“Hey! Don’t you know you can’t do that here?”

It was bad enough that smokers were being rounded up in airports and shoved into little glass rooms away from other people. I warned T that one day they would make him sew a yellow star on all his shirts and jackets. “Next thing you know, you’ll be in the shower line at a special camp, handing your nicotine stained possessions over to a State official.”

Do they still have smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants or are they all gone, too? I think the few smoking sections that are left exist only where there is a bar, separated from the rest of the non-addicts. But soon bars and taverns will be off-limits, too.

You can’t smoke in a movie theater, and soon you won’t be able to have your cell phone in there, either. Well, you can have it, but it’ll be useless. The State will block cell phone reception so you won’t be receiving any calls.

And the debate about lowering the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 continues. Since I started college at 17, I was damn near out of school before I could legally purchase alcohol. The argument seems like a no-brainer: if you’re 18, you’re an adult and should be allowed to consume adult beverages without violating the law. The other side insists that 18 year-olds aren’t adult enough to consume responsibly. Sometimes they drink too much, or they drink and drive. You see, we cannot change the law because people just won’t behave themselves.

And because people will continue to drink and drive, we must raise the price of liquor and increase the tax on it. The fact that this punishes responsible adults who do not drink and drive is not an issue. Everyone gets screwed because of the few who just cannot behave.

Similarly, we can’t ask people to turn off their phones in a theater because they won’t, so we must jam the reception. We can’t expect smokers to keep a distance from non-smokers, so we must discriminate against them. But in this case discrimination isn’t a bad thing.

After all, we’re talking about weak-willed, spineless, inconsiderate, polluting miscreants with an addiction problem.

One thing that everyone seemed to agree on was this: The Winter Olympics were one big bore. From the opening ceremonies to the closing ceremonies, this was political correctness at its worst. Did I miss something, or was there no tallying of medals won by individual countries? I kept asking who’s winning, who’s in the lead, what’s the medal count? Did I get up to get a beer and forget to come back? Or did they purposely avoid making those counts available to the viewers? Sure, I could have gone online to hunt for the information, but why couldn’t someone from NBC simply announce it every now and then? The message was clear: This is not about competition. Oh, yeah? No wonder everyone’s watching American Idol and Project Runway instead.

Ah, for those heady days when we knew precisely how many medals the USA had won, and how many were in the columns for the USSR and East Germany. When the French athletes would narrow their eyes at the English athletes. The point was simple then: our country is going to kick your country’s ass and we’re going to do it without tanks, bombs, or bullets. And then when all is said and done we’re going to go get drunk together and exchange souvenirs. See you again in four years.

When it became obvious that no one was watching this mess, the media created some tension to make it more interesting. Hedrick v. Davis. And, frankly, that was boring, too. But it certainly garnered more air time than Joey Cheek donating his Olympic bonus money to assist refugee children in Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan.

Joey who?

The Archbishop, it appears, has sanctioned illegal immigration, so local talk radio is once more all abuzz about “ethnic tensions.” Isn’t this what started the Grape series? I live in a large state that has, for its size, a total population that’s smaller than the average American big city. With so few people, and so many of them spread out across the state, one would think we’d all get along. It’s one of the few states where whites are, officially, the minority, so we have, according to all statistics, a non-white majority. A large Native American and Hispanic population here. This is, after all, the American Southwest and we stole the land right out from under them.

I know this because people call up talk radio every day and state this as fact. White people illegally immigrated to the Southwest and stole the land from Mexicans. This is then, technically, Mexico. I realize there’s a whole lot of history that, conveniently, is omitted from this hypothesis, but why weigh down an argument with facts?

Caller Number 1: “Yeah, I moved here from New York. I’m getting’ more than a little tired of bein’ categorized as Hispanic all da time. Ya got Mexicans and Cubans and Puerto Ricans and everyone knows dey all hate each other, but dey’re all called Hispanics. I don’t wanna be lumped in with all dose people, ya know what I’m sayin’? I’m an American. Oh - an’ I’m an ex-Catholic, too.”

Caller Number 2: “You people stole our land. We were here first and you stole our land.”

Caller Number 3: “Yeah, I just wanna know who they stole it from before we stole it.”

Caller Number 4: “I just want to say that what that other caller was saying is true. You people stole our land. And now you don’t like it because we’re taking it back. Payback sucks, huh?”

Caller Number 5: “I just want to be clear on this. If we agree on this premise - that this land is really Mexico and we just stole it - and we go ahead and turn it over to all the Mexican Nationals who are here illegally and all the Hispanics who live here, won’t they just have to keep moving north once they completely screw it up and it’s just like that hellhole country south of the border that they left? I mean, is that what they want?”

Caller Number 6: “My family’s been here for 500 years. We had a land grant signed by the King of Spain. I wanna know where all these freakin’ Orientals are coming from.”

“For the love of God, can’t we love one another just a little? That’s how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.”

– Eleanor of Aquitaine to her sons Richard, Geoffrey, and John in James Goldman’s “The Lion In Winter”

This little trip down memory lane is winding down at last. It’s been a bit challenging to capture these little vignettes and post them here on the V.O.T. Not because I had to dig deep, confront personal demons, grapple with introspection, or carefully examine past events. It was hard because I was getting pretty damned bored with The Grapes series. And if my eyes were glazing over, anybody else reading this must have been dying. My formative years really weren’t this dull; I did omit quite a bit of information, but my purpose here was not to write my memoirs. All I wanted to do was skate across the surface of my years in school, pick out some specific events and relationships, and see if I could find justification for bad behavior.

Bear with me here. I know this has been one tedious journey, but there have been current events that can all be traced to the bad behavior I’ve been referring to. And some of this has been, I admit, selfish. I have immersed myself in news and I’m fried. I needed a break from all the grisly murders, pedophile priests and teachers, church burnings, car chases, the political rantings of government school teachers, polls that reveal how little Americans know about the Constitution, and various groups of victims who are all paranoid about other groups looking at them cross-eyed so they feel they need to get even by running them over with their cars. And those local high school kids are still beating the crap out of one another.

T and I sometimes find ourselves watching shows like Intervention and we start getting irritable. It’s the victim parade. Every episode features people with addictions and personal problems, and at some point in the hour the viewer is treated to the excuse list. Monica is a meth addict because she didn’t get a lot of attention when she was a kid. Joe is an alcoholic because his parents got divorced when he was six. Stacey has sex with strangers because she was molested by a family friend when she was eight. Dena was raped so she abuses heroin. Tanya didn’t make the cheerleading team and Tony got kicked off the football team, so they break into people’s homes and steal things so they can finance their drug habits. Jenny was raised by her single mother because her father abandoned the family. James was poor. Josh couldn’t get into the college of his choice. Jessica’s best friend was murdered. Katie thinks she’s fat and unattractive. Nathan got bad grades. John’s sixth grade science project failed. Darla got a “D” in Human Geography and wasn’t allowed to go camping with her friends. Pam’s guinea pig died. Leticia didn’t get a car when she graduated. Jesse’s got allergies. No one ever told Brian that he was good at anything so he sets fires.

“Whoa. That happened to me.”

“That happened to me, too.”

“And we were both raised by our mothers.”

“What are we doing here when we should be living under a viaduct, sucking down Thunderbird?”

“We should be out there beating up old ladies and stealing their purses.”

“Isn’t there a government program for deadbeats like us?”

“Ya think?”

Based on all these studies and self-help programs, T should have been thoroughly screwed up and I should have been, too. We should have substance abuse issues, criminal records, and hepatitis. My question is: Why do some kids who come from imperfect backgrounds turn out okay? Conversely, why do some kids who come from good families turn out bad?

Some say poverty is the reason. Poor kids don’t have the advantages that rich kids have. How is it, then, that so many poor kids manage to succeed? Others cite religion. I think we all know kids who grew up in religious households that are dysfunctional. Some grew up in secular homes and manage to function quite well. Divorce? Broken homes? Abuse?

Is it educational level? Substandard performance in school? Boredom? Hanging out with the “wrong crowd?” Peer pressure? Specific events? Lack of encouragement? Poor role models? I used to think when I was growing up that every kid should have an Italian mother. Sometimes she’d walk into the room and I’d flinch. Without hesitation, I’d get smacked.

“Owwwwww! What did I do?”

“You flinched so you must have done something. You have a guilty conscience.”

“I don’t!”

“Well, then that was for whatever it is you might do!”

With that logic, I should have grown up completely nuts. But, thinking that I could get punished for doing nothing, the thought of what my mother might do if I’d actually done something was a risk I didn’t want to take. Today I pay my bills on time and drive the speed limit. When I see trash on the ground I pick it up and throw it in a receptacle. I return the shopping cart to the store. I don’t blast my car stereo. I don’t throw beer bottles out of my vehicle — I recycle them. I capture bugs in the house and release them outside. With all the things my mother did wrong, how did my siblings and I make it to adulthood without committing any felonies?

When I look back at our situation, I could focus on all the things that didn’t go right or I can focus on the things that did. I remember that everyone in my family had a sense of humor and an appreciation of good food and good books. We loved animals and always had a lot of pets. My mother tolerated strays and brought home plenty of her own. We were exposed to different types of people and ideas. And I had a unique doll collection. My first toys were a stuffed fish named Bubbles, a doll with a cow face, and a life sized baby doll that my sisters had played with before me. The doll was Asian. I had black dolls, Spanish dolls, boy dolls, East Indian and Native American dolls. On some level I suspected that if I’d come home pregnant and told my mother the baby was going to be something exotic, she wouldn’t have had an issue. But that wasn’t enough reason to test that theory.

We had disadvantages, bad experiences, and were often left alone to fend for ourselves. But we knew what was right, what was wrong, and we had a very healthy sense of shame. Something as simple as a high school teacher telling me that she was disappointed in what I was wearing was enough to feel it. My mother and sisters usually chose my clothes and my teachers always commented on my appearance. But at some point I wanted to be more casual and just dress like everyone else. Jeans, T-shirts, sneakers. When that teacher said she was dismayed that I was no longer wearing the clothes that made me stand out from the rest of the high school crowd, I felt guilty. And a little ashamed that I wasn’t putting my wardrobe to good use. Gradually I returned to the sweaters and blazers and tailored blouses. (I fell off that wagon at some point in college.)

So the only other thing I can think of is respect. Respect for self, for parents, siblings, teachers, the law, property, other people’s feelings, animals, institutions. If a kid doesn’t respect anyone or anything, is that an indication of trouble? Today I’m comfortable with my decisions to avoid breeding and teaching in the public schools. When I was a kid I fell for the story about following the rules, being on time, keeping my nose clean, doing the work, getting the grades, and never showing up empty-handed. If you behave appropriately, there will be a reward. If you misbehave, there will be consequences. How can any parent or teacher convince a kid that’s true today?

I look at some of the miscreants I went to school with and some of them managed to come out of trouble just fine. They didn’t follow the rules, obey, behave, do the right thing, or consider others’ feelings or the consequences. How can a parent tell a kid to avoid drugs when The Rolling Stones are still touring and raking in millions of dollars? Or tell his daughter that she shouldn’t grow up like Paris Hilton? Bad behavior is rewarded all the time and unscrupulous people often come out on top. If you tell a kid that it’s still important to study hard and be home by ten, he’s going to think you’re a sucker.

So how, with all the opportunities for people to choose the wrong path, do some maintain a sense of decorum and conduct themselves like civilized human beings? Why aren’t we all barbarians? Well, like Eleanor says in The Lion In Winter:

“Love, in a world where carpenters get resurrected, anything is possible.”

There will still be people among us who will do what’s right. Hopefully they will be rewarded at some point here on earth. And, with any luck, they won’t be outnumbered by all the wolverines.

A university is a remarkable place because a person is exposed to a lot of different people, experiences, and ideas. Since the majority of people on a college campus aren’t being forced to attend, they’re generally happy to be there. I was fortunate to be at an obscure school in an obscure place that attracted obscure people. Take that anyway you wish.

The school had an excellent reputation, and students came from all over the world to be there. I’d mentioned that I ended up in an acting class with the brother of my best friend from my elementary school in Chicago. I said I lived on Sheridan Road, he said he lived on Pratt. I said it was odd that my best friend lived on Pratt: What was your name again? And that’s when I discovered who he was. Odd, indeed.

Another kid was the son of a Hollywood producer who had started out as an actor. I’d seen his dad in a movie he’d made with a very young Jack Nicholson. This kid was a hoot and we ended up in a lot of classes together. He had an outrageous punk band and I’d go to clubs to watch them play. Years later I saw him in a film in which he had one scene: upstaging Mel Gibson. And then there was the movie made in the Philippines. He had the lead in this one…and sex scenes, too. I caught it on Cinemax one night and cannot remember the name, but I suppose I could find it if I wanted to. The two of us were in a couple shows together - one was a play written by an Iranian graduate student. And I just remembered that he was in a play I’d written. I’d actually forgotten about that.

There were several Iranian students at the school and it was at the time America was being held hostage. One professor started each class with “Today is day number…” and write the number on the board. My Iranian friends were attractive, intelligent, well-educated, and had an innate sense of style. Boy, could they accessorize. Each one wore beautiful scarves and jewelry. It was fun putting together traditional Iranian costumes for the show, but there was one thing the students were quick to point out: “We are Persian.” The hostage situation was difficult for them. These women were forward-thinking and pro-American, and horrified that there was this conflict in the world.

Speaking of pro-American students who had incredible style, I made friends with a lot of Japanese students, too. However, I did notice that none of them were female. For the first couple years of school I lived in an enormous apartment complex where units were divided into four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and one kitchen. Either four males or four females would share the unit. I was lucky when I started school because I liked the girls in my unit. One was Native American, a nursing student who spent most of her time hiding in her room. She was shy, too, but when we’d get her out she was always a lot of fun. The other two girls were inseparable and soon moved out to rent a house together. They had different guys over all the time and they never learned that if they locked my bathroom door and forgot to unlock it that I’d have no access to a bathroom. One of the girls was from the Bay Area so it was nice to have something familiar so close. But after they left, new roommates would come and go, and I had great ones and not-so great ones. Individually, they were wonderful, but sometimes the combinations were not. For the most part, everyone got along until two girls moved in and started a catty campaign against a third roommate. When I stepped in to defend her, I became the enemy. I just felt sorry for the girl. She was a nice kid from a family of Italian ranchers in Modesto. She would have been better off at Fresno State, but for some reason she wanted to be at a school where she was clearly out of place. She liked cowboys and country music and Wranglers, and was working her way through school by serving up chicken at a KFC. She’d wash out her uniform in the sink every night, and we could all smell it. The other roommates poked fun at her and made her life utterly miserable. They were cruel. She ended up dropping out and returning to Modesto. I might have dropped out, too, if I’d continued living with that group. The relationships deteriorated, things happened, and I moved out. Later, friendships were rekindled, but they were never quite the same.

I also made friends with a kid named John, but I noticed that his roommates sometimes called him Otis. I asked him about it.

“Actually, both names are my names. I prefer Otis, but I think it sounds too black. Don’t you?”

“You are black. Why don’t you just go by Otis? I prefer it, too.”

“I just don’t want to be stereotyped because of my name.”

“Otis. You’re black. If you get stereotyped, it probably won’t be because of your name.”

“Good point. Then I’m officially Otis.”

There was a burger joint in our college town that served phenomenal shakes and fries. We were there one day sharing a monster order and I was trying to convince him to change his major. He was studying Wildlife Management but he wasn’t passionate about it.

“Why Wildlife Management?”

“This school has an excellent program - maybe the best. My parents would like to see me settle into a safe government job after I graduate. It’s something stable. Secure. They don’t want me to waste my education. They want it to pay off. Besides, how many black kids do you see in that department?”

“I’d say you were it.”

“That’s right. I mean, it isn’t necessarily what I really want to be doing, but I can see my parents’ way of thinking. Since I’m black, I’ll probably get a job right out of school. They probably have to hire blacks and how many do you think there’ll be? I might be the only one.”

“True. So what would you be doing as a Wildlife Manager?”

“Well, I’d probably have an office somewhere at a government station in the woods and I’d be counting, for instance, all the deer in the area. And if there were too many, I’d have to decide how many would have to be hunted so they wouldn’t die from disease or starvation.”

“Why doesn’t that sound fun?”

“It’s not really.”

“I can tell. I mean, it’s necessary, I guess. But it doesn’t seem like a pleasant way to spend your life. You love politics. You really enjoy your Poli Sci courses. And you lean right. You’re smart. Presentable. Articulate. I say you should study Political Science and become the first black Republican president.”

“My parents would kill me.”

“I think they’d be happy to have the leader of the free world in the family.”

“No. They want me to have a safe, secure government job.”

“Being president is a government job. And what with all that Secret Service, it’s pretty safe.”

Just when I thought I had him convinced, I heard the group of men at the other table. The whole time we were there I’d felt like we were being stared at, but I thought I was being paranoid. I heard them, though.

“So you were saying?”

“Did you just hear what I heard?”

“Nope. Just keep telling me why I should change my major.”

“No, seriously. I think - no, I know I just heard them say ‘nigger lover.’”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No…you…didn’t. Now just eat your fries, drink your shake, and we’ll finish up here and go.”

“But - “

“We’ll go.”

“But - “

“Ignore it. Pretend you didn’t hear it, okay?”

“But - “

“Eat your fries and just keep talking. And don’t you look over there.”

I looked at them and they looked at me, then they turned away and went back to their conversation. It was the most blatantly racist episode I can recall from that period, and it made an impression.

I think about it and then I think about the Hispanic and black kids who are still beating the crap out of each other at that local high school.

To be continued…

And now, of course, I’m reminded of that boyfriend who was behind the wheel. Here’s how odd life can be. The boyfriend was a close friend of the girl who kept throwing herself down the stairs. And he was the best friend of one of my high school boyfriends: a skinny Jewish kid who had a hump, played drums, and worked in ceramics. It turned out he was bisexual, then he decided he was homosexual, and he moved to Oregon to blow glass for a living. We had all been going to the same schools for years and our paths kept crossing, but there was just something about this one kid I didn’t like. The feeling was mutual, and as much as our two friends told us that we would actually like each other, we refused to ever be in the same room together and we never conversed.

Then, much to my horror, I discovered after a year in college that not only was he going to be attending my university (he was a year younger and a grade behind me), but his educational plan was almost identical to mine. That would mean that we’d be in most of our classes together. We successfully avoided speaking to one another even though we were always almost bumping into each other. Literally. Then one day we left a literature class and found ourselves standing in a typical Pacific Northwest downpour. I finally spoke. “Your books are going to be ruined. Would you like a ride home to avoid drowning in this?” We immediately became best friends.

Now the strangest part. The kid who had told me about the homecoming king who was really the homecoming queen? That was him. He’d mentioned this little tidbit when we were in college because we’d never exchanged a word in middle or high school. Like me, he collected odd friends. And he had a lot of them. They came in all sizes, colors, and shapes. One in particular was an eccentric poet. He came from a rich family and his father was a prominent surgeon in the Dallas area. For some reason he’d joined the army and was stationed in Germany where he proceeded to do a lot of drugs. He left the army. To support a heroin habit, he became a male prostitute. He explained that the government would pay for his education and would continue to pay his living expenses if he would agree to periodic psychiatric evaluations to prove that he was insane. I was skeptical and thought he was pretending to be nuts just so he could unfairly milk the system. Time passed and it became clear that he really was quite mad. And he was one of our more normal friends.

My first college boyfriend was an Art major - a nice Jewish boy from Orange County who wanted to be a photographer. Ironically, this other boyfriend was also a photographer, and it was awkward when the three of us would find ourselves in the same spot in the Art department. The problem with a small school.

Today, the first boyfriend still taking pictures and is a professor of photography and department chairman at a prestigious eastern university. The other boyfriend, I suspect, was the better photographer, but is not doing it today for a living. A pity. I thought of him today when I took a book off my shelf - a collection of Diane Arbus photos. Like Arbus, he found odd subjects and captured them in black and white. Creepy neighborhoods, seedy areas, moldy Victorians, decaying architecture, old trains, decrepit places and people. I remember a particular woman who worked in a drugstore. He’d go there just to look at her. One day he asked if he could take her picture and she agreed. I was afraid she would be offended, but it wasn’t like he was taking advantage of her or mocking her. He genuinely thought she was so amazing, so special, that her image deserved to be immortalized. Her hair was swept into a jet black beehive and she wore cat’s eye glasses. Her name was Wanda. I swear she was the inspiration behind The Far Side. But my boyfriend took her picture and returned to the store with copies and thanked her. He was so genuine, so sincere, that I suspect she was flattered, not offended.

His influence was profound. His tastes in food, music, art, clothes, interior design, literature, film, and beer guide me even today. He was way ahead of his time. Anytime something horrible happened to us, he’d document the event with his camera and scribble captions on the photos. To him, even a bad event was one to celebrate. It was fodder for an interesting story, a memory. This theory has, in some way, shaped me. It would be easy for me to describe all the unspeakable events of my life and focus primarily on them instead of the more pleasant, benign ones. But over time many of the most unbearable incidents in my life have been, like subjects in a photograph, manipulated in that darkroom I know is my head and the end result is a much prettier picture. The bad episodes — the unfortunate experiences — can completely control a person. Or a person can, instead, control the experiences. My friend made an art of it. I wasn’t surprised, then, when I learned that he’d obtained his master’s in psychology. He’d been practicing on all his case study friends for years - gratis.

To be continued…

I figured that if my parents were allowing me to go off to college at 17 I’d earned some level of trust and I didn’t want to disappoint them. Either that or they just wanted me 300 miles away so they didn’t have to listen to The Who, Sparks, Mott the Hoople, and Jethro Tull anymore. My stepfather used to roll his eyes when he’d walk past my room, but it wasn’t unusual to hear him out in the yard, pruning a tree, and whistling some familiar tune.

“Wait a minute. That’s Pinball Wizard!”

My mother didn’t mind my music; after all, she was the one who brought home our first Beatles records. But my stepfather had led a quiet, solitary life before he met my mother and my music just had to be disconcerting. Still, he’d drive me to the record stores and let me spend my money on peculiarities. I think it was when I started playing Tubular Bells endlessly, he began to lose patience. To compensate, I added more classical albums to my collection, thinking he wouldn’t mind hearing the great composers. But even those guys can grate on your nerves after awhile. As a compromise, I’d listen to pop standards and Manhattan Transfer.

But my stepfather was wise. He purchased an enormous Time-Life anthology of swing/big band music and played it in the livingroom. My mother was partial to Glenn Miller and Cole Porter, he liked Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, and Harry James. And soon I was humming (still can’t whistle to save my soul) String of Pearls, One O’Clock Jump, Moonlight Serenade, Stompin’ At The Savoy, Begin the Beguine, Caravan, and Stardust. When my parents felt I was spending too much time holed up in my bedroom, my stepfather would pull out that anthology. Tuxedo Junction would lure me out into the livingroom every time. (Today I play my own anthologies. I’m almost always in the mood for Glenn Miller.)

Unlike my peers, I actually didn’t mind spending time with my parents because they were smart, funny people. Throw my sister into the mix and we were cracking up all the time. My mother, once she married my stepfather, decided to give domesticity a shot and was cooking and baking up a storm. When people say there’s nothing worse than fruitcake, I think of the ones my mother made when I was in high school and know that if these people had tried hers, they’d have a very different opinion. My stepfather’s deceased mother, a collector, had an extensive assortment of odd shaped liquor bottles all over the house. Since my parents weren’t drinkers, my mother soaked her cakes in these exquisitely aged spirits. Naturally, I learned to love fruitcake.

Maybe I’m reminded of all this because when I look in the mirror and see how my shaved head has evolved (yes, it’s growing back and it’s growing weird) I see a thirteen year-old girl suffering from quadrophenia. Let me explain. When I went back to Chicago to visit my sisters during the summer of 1972 I had a dream. I told my former brother-in-law that I thought it had included the lyrics from a song on The Who’s next album.

“Okay, whatever you say. Let’s hear ‘em.”

“This is all I can remember. Something like ‘magically bored on a quiet street corner, free frustration in our minds and our toes.’ I think this means there’s a new album coming.”

“Wait a minute. You’re saying those are song lyrics?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, right!”

My brother-in-law was a Sha Na Na fan. At any rate, time passed and when I finally heard the lyrics to 5:15 and recognized them as the ones in my dream a year earlier, I was convinced it was a sign. I was a freshman in high school - this was no time to play fast and loose with my appearance, but it didn’t matter. I went to my mother who, when I was in elementary school, thought she was Vidal Sassoon and practiced on my head, and asked her if she thought she could do it again. My stepfather, who had fought in the big war, had a vintage Air Force jacket in mint condition. I took it and duplicated the design that was on the back of the jacket seen on the cover of Quadrophenia. He also had an old Honda mini-bike in the shed and excavated it when I said I needed a scooter to complete my look. Which, at the time, was probably ridiculous. No, wait - it was ridiculous. I was a Mod at a time when it was decidedly uncool. It was hard for me to find kids my age who were as fond of The Who as I was. What was popular then was Elton John and all the soul stuff that, today, Time-Life is selling in multi-disc collections at three o’clock in the morning. Well — couldn’t accuse me of conformity, now could you?

I was ready for my first Who concert: Tuesday, November 20, 1973 at The Cow Palace. Yes, that one. I remember when I noticed Keith Moon behind his drum kit slowing down and starting to sway. I looked at John Entwistle and it seemed to me as if he was looking at Keith Moon, too. I nudged my brother and yelled: “Look at Keith Moon!” Stagerats scrambled to push him back up on his drum stool and they jammed his sticks back into his hands. He started to play again but it was no use. When he finally left the stage unconscious and didn’t return, Pete Townshend walked to the microphone and said:

“Is there a drummer in the house?”

Now, over the years, I’ve heard and read various accounts of this concert and most of them say that Townshend asked for a drummer by shouting into the audience: “Hey! Can anybody play drums?” But to this day I swear he said the other, more clever line. I insist that’s what he said, and people laughed, thinking he was joking. Then he asked again. And that’s when the nineteen year-old kid from Iowa, who’d scalped a ticket, jumped up on the stage and played with the band. Kid’s name was Scott. And that was my first Who concert.

I digress. I’m just reminded that there were problems with every Who concert I ever saw. For instance, I recall driving down Hwy. 101 from my college town to the Bay Area to see the band. My boyfriend was driving his pitiful beige Pinto and, as he reached behind him to grab his jacket from the backseat, I noticed headlights ahead of us. A car was speeding towards ours and was on the wrong side of the road. We spun out, avoiding a collision. As we were spinning around and around, feeling like the car would never stop, all I can remember thinking was: “Whoa! Your life really does flash before your eyes!”

To be continued…