How not to deal with grief

It was Saturday morning. I was supposed to go to my second grief support group meeting, but it was so depressing the first time I went, I decided to go for a drive instead. I'd never been to San Diego, so that's where I headed. Just as I reached Irvine, though, it started raining. My Miata's plastic rear window was messed up, and the rain started coming in the car; I thought, well, I've never been to Irvine, either, and got off at the next exit.

I ended up at a huge mall. I went into a craft store and bought some poofballs and twisty pipe cleaners for my four year old nephew. When I came back out, the sun was shining.

(I should perhaps mention here that I have ADD, so I get lost a lot. I've gotten lost so many times that it no longer bothers me, unless I wind up in a neighborhood with a lot of pawn shops and gun stores.)

Since it was nice out, I decided to explore Irvine. I took one random turn and then another, hoping to happen upon the city's interesting part. But it seemed that each new street was more boring than the last. I finally wound up on a road full of business parks. There was no one else around. That is, except for the cop behind me. He turned his lights on and I pulled over.

"Do you know why I pulled you over?"

"Yes, it's my expired sticker, isn't it. But, I have the paperwork here." I reached into my glove compartment and pulled out a wad of papers. I started going through them, looking for the one saying I had paid my registration and just needed my car to pass smog.

"Do you know where you are?" he asked.

"I have no idea." I laughed. "I was hoping maybe you could help me."

"You are in Irvine."

"Well, I knew that."

"Do you know where Irvine is?"

"I have a vague idea." I was still rifling through my papers.

"Do you know what state you're in?"

"Yes." It suddenly hit me that he wasn't being too friendly.

He cleared his throat, and I looked up.

"You still haven't told me what state you're in."

"California."

"That is correct."

I found the paper and handed it to him. "Could you tell me the way back to the 405?"

"Not so fast. When I pulled you over, it wasn't just because of your expired sticker."

"It wasn't?"

"I saw you coming out of the shopping mall. You kept making turns and you wound up here. Can you explain that?"

"I got lost. I always get lost."

"What did you buy in the mall?"

I opened the bag so that he could see the poofballs and pipe cleaners.

"You came to Irvine to buy that?"

"Well, no. I didn't really come here for any reason."

"You realize, don't you, that your behavior is not normal."

"It is for me."

He looked at my license. "It says you live in Marina Del Rey."

"I just moved there a few months ago."

"Yet, now you are in Irvine. What I want to know is, why would someone who lives in Marina Del Rey come to Irvine...for no reason?"

I shrugged.

"Listen, I want you to recite the alphabet without singing. Do you understand?"

I recited the alphabet.

"Do you realize how fast you recited that? That was not normal. Are you on any medication?"

"I'm on Ritalin."

"OK, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car."

He gestured at two short, Asian cops standing a few yards away. "They're in training. Ignore them." It seemed as if nothing better would suit them, as they were both staring at the ground.

He then had me do a series of drunk driving tests. I was wearing heels, which bothered him. He asked me to take them off, but I refused. He insisted, and I kicked them off. After I successfully passed his ballet tests, he shone a flashlight up my nose.

"Did you know you have a deviated septum?"

"No. Because I don't."

"Yes, you do. I'm trained to spot them. Did you know a deviated septum is a sign of cocaine use?"

For those of you who don't know me, the idea of me doing cocaine is ridiculous. I was so angry, my heart was pounding.

"Look," he said. "I specialize in detecting drug addicts, and I'm afraid you fit all the criteria: you don't know where you are...."

"I was joking!"

"You are on Ritalin...."

"I have ADD. I've been on it for years."

"Well, in my experience, people who take Ritalin take it when they can't get cocaine. And, you live in Marina Del Rey. Yet, now you are in Irvine. For no good reason."

"I was just going for a drive. I like driving."

"No one 'just drives' to Irvine."

"Well, I know that now."

"Finally, you have a deviated septum."

"Look, my mom died a month and a half ago and I'm still a bit stressed out. I thought if I went for a drive, it would make me feel better." I despised myself for mentioning it, but I was really starting to worry I'd wind up in the slammer.

The cop studied me for a moment. Then, he said, "I'm sorry, but I know people who have lost a parent. And do you know that not one of them just out of the blue decided to drive to Irvine."

He grabbed my wrist. "I'm going to take your pulse now, if you don't mind." He looked at his watch, then announced, "Your pulse is really, really fast. Dangerously fast."

"That's because I'm really, really annoyed."

"Look, I don't think it's safe for you to drive with that pulse rate. That pulse rate indicates a bad reaction to drugs. It's no use trying to fool me -- I'm trained to recognize people like you. It'd be better if you just told me when you last took the cocaine."

"I have never done cocaine!"

"I see. Well, I'd like to know how you got that deviated septum, then. I am going to have to ask to search your car. Officer Wong and Officer Chen will take down your information."

While he rummaged through my car, I told the trainees my job and contact information. They seemed so uncomfortable with the situation, it made me feel a bit better. (My Chicago friend, Beth, yelled at me later for letting him search my car: 'Don't you know he could have planted something on you?')

After returning empty-handed, he asked, "Has whatever you've taken worn off enough for you to drive safely? I don't want to be responsible for you getting in an accident and killing an innocent person."

Once more, I said I hadn't taken drugs and that my septum was not deviated.

"For your sake, I hope you're telling the truth." Then he let me go.

Later, I asked my friend who is a hospital intern to look at my septum. She said it's not deviated.

Gypsy woman vs. businesswoman

I caught a Circle Line tube around 10:30 AM. It was fairly crowded with mostly tourists, but the guy sitting next to me and the woman next to him were in business suits. At one stop, the doors opened and a fat gypsy lady got on. She clasped her hands together and said in a sing song voice, “Hello! I’m...”

“I’m sorry, but no," said the businesswoman in an even louder voice. "Not in this car, not today. Get out.”

“Good show, good show!” said my neighbor, shaking out his newspaper as if to shake the gypsy off.

The stunned looking gypsy backed away while the businesswoman continued her tirade: “Go to some other carriage. I want to enjoy a nice, quiet tube ride.”

The gypsy was now standing on the platform looking in. "F--- you," she said.

“Thank you, but I have a lovely husband at home to do that for me. That's why I have two lovely children. So f--- off yourself."

Then the tube doors closed and we were on our way. It all happened so quickly. The man went back to reading his newspaper, and hardly anyone registered a reaction. It may as well have never happened. I felt that the man wanted to express some deeper thanks to his neighbor, but by the time we hit the next stop, the newspaper seemed to have engrossed him fully, and then he got off. Another stop, and pretty much only the woman and me remained of the original passenger load. Then she got off, and it was just me.

Note: This entry was from my London journal. Musicians, gypsies, etc., will get on the tube during tourist hours and work a car for money. They stay in the car just until the next stop.

"I hope he didn't think I was strange."

Christmas 2003....

G's mom invited an old woman over for Christmas dinner. She had met her at some community event. "She'll be all alone, otherwise. She's an intellectual, so I thought she might like meeting G. She says she's lonely for people who understand her."

When the old woman arrived, and G's father was taking her coat, she said, "My own daughter and son-in-law refused to have me over. He's a no-good idiot. And she's an idiot for marrying him."

At the dinner table, she studied us one by one, frowning and pursing her lips as it seemingly sank in that we were to be her dinner companions. Then she focused on the father.

"What do you do?"

G's dad opened his mouth slowly, but before he could say anything, G's mom piped up, "He's a mechanic for Safeway. He'll be retiring in two years."

G's dad closed his mouth again, smiling shyly. It seemed like he and his wife had developed a ventriloquist act over their forty year marriage.

The old lady now stared at G. His mom said, "I forget if I mentioned G is getting his PhD at UCLA."

The old lady nodded slowly, as if she knew all about it. "By the time I was three, it was already clear I was a genius."

She was originally from Germany. Apparently, though, Hitler had a vendetta against her -- she made it sound like they concocted WWII just to annoy her and make life difficult. So she came to Boston at age seven, but "American kids picked on me because I was more intelligent than them." So she went to Argentina, where she wound up in charge of the top hospital in the country and oversaw five million patients a year (when I told my brother this, he suggested that perhaps she was suffering from senile dementia. She seemed pretty clear-headed in other respects).

For some reason, she had to leave Argentina and come back to America, where they wouldn't recognize her medical credentials. "Can you believe they had the gall to tell me I needed to pass a high school equivalency test?" Refusing this indignity, she became a travel agent. "I had to suffer the company of American tourists, who would ask for air conditioning in Alaska. Imagine, air conditioning in Alaska! Ah, there's nothing like an American tourist."

"Mom, show her your little black man," said G's sister. "You know, the little black man you got in Alaska."

I was picturing Sammy Davis Jr., but Mrs. H. got up and brought back a little Eskimo sculpture (obviously made of plastic).

The old woman looked at it down her long nose, like a jeweler appraising a diamond, and declared, "It's worthless. It's a fake, made of modern material."

"Oh, I expected that, but I know you know so much about art, so I was just curious."

"I have some Inupiat works, which I got in Alaska, where the only true Inupiat artists work. The real stuff can only be touched by a Inuipat or a half Inuipat."

G's dad, who was sitting next to me, asked softly, "Is it a spiritual thing?""

I whispered back, "More of a money thing."

She noticed me for the first time and shook her head, as if regretting that she couldn't have me executed right there and then.

"You don't know anything about it."

Even if I didn't, I wasn't going to admit it to her. "Well, my mom has a big collection of Eskimo statues. She got them in Manitoba, and they're all certified."

She paused, then said, "You are mistaken. Your mother could never afford it. One statue alone costs $50,000."

I shrugged and went back to my mashed potatoes (though later I called my mom to verify that her collection was all certified and done by a top "Inupiat" artist. She bought them more than 30 years ago).

But the lady wasn't finished with me. "What do you do?"

"I'm a database programmer."

"It must be hard for you."

"Not really."

"Where did you go to school?"

"Illinois Institute of Technology. My dad was a prof there, so I got free tuition."

"Well, I have never heard of it."

G's sister pointed out that my brother went to the same college (CalTech) as G, and I said, "Yes, he double-majored and now he's a professor at UCLA." I felt rather pitiful for saying this, as usually I prefer complaining about my brother, but at least it worked: she gave me one last dirty look and turned her attention back to G.

I fled soon afterwards. When I crept back downstairs twenty minutes later, she and G were alone at the table...everyone else had escaped. I paused at the bottom of the stairwell long enough to overhear:

"Young man, everything in your field has already been discovered." (G's field was theoretical plasma physics.) "You need to think forwards. I know what I'm talking about. I had tea with Albert Einstein."

Later on, another lady came by, a very nice woman, with her adult son. The son had lost his job, the mother mentioned.

"How does it feel making your mother work two jobs to support you?" asked the old lady, interrupting the introductions.

"But I don't support him. He lives on his own off his own money."

"Ah, he's nothing but a parasite."

I admired the young man's fortitude -- he didn't say a word in reply.

When everyone was getting ready to leave, it was discovered that the old lady and the young man lived in the same area (about 20 minutes away).

"I will follow you home," she said.

"Sure. No problem."

A couple hours later, the old woman called to say she had only just gotten home. Apparently, the young man led her into a strange neighborhood and then sped off in his Firebird.

On the phone, the lady kept asking G's mom what G thought of her, saying over and over again, "I hope he didn't think I was strange."

Adm. Radford's broken-down car and other notes

These are notes I jotted down while talking with my mom in the summer of 2004. Unfortunately, my notes are incomplete. Background: she worked as a legal secretary at a top law firm in Washington DC during the Kennedy/Johnson era.
----
Mom saw Jack Kennedy a foot away coming out of the Willard Hotel, "and all I can remember is that huge red fat face, which I know now was the cortisone. I was standing right by the doorway and Jack Kennedy comes out. And I thought, good God he doesn't look like his pictures."
----
When Mom lived in Baltimore, she'd see H. L. Mencken sitting on a park bench as she passed by in a bus.
----
"I used to go to the Georgetown Inn. You remember the Georgetown, don't you, Graham?"

"Yes, but I only saw it from the outside."

"I used to go there with this guy, and Dirkson, a famous senator, and McGee. It was a nightclub, with a piano bar. It was an expensive place.

"Admiral...what was his name, Graham?"

"I can't remember."

"He rented an office from us. He was on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he had a Cadillac and was driving down the avenue with his wife and it broke down and he was furious and he called GM -- he knew someone there and they wanted to give him a new car and he refused to take it. Because of his principles. Or did he accept it? Now I can't remember which. Radford...he was in the corner office. He was against the Vietnam War, but if we were going to do it, he said we should use everything we had, including nuclear.

"I remember another guy, a friend of Johnson's, and he used to tell me what went on down there."
----
"We had another attorney in our office who was friends with Jack and Jacqlyn Kennedy. He had all these pictures of them in his office. I hated him, though...he was always...."
----
"Oh, and another client the attorneys had was the Shah of Iran's sister and husband. But the thing that ran around the office was that she or they wanted these poodles, so the firm...he arranged to get them shipped over. The thing of it is they were quite expensive, and there wasn't just one, and of course they never paid the bill, and it went on and on and the other partners were furious."
----
My mom told me another time that one day Bobby Kennedy and his security men walked past her. After a few moments, a couple of the security men came back and said that Kennedy liked the looks of her, and would she please come with them. (She refused.) She didn't want me to tell anyone this story, but I figure enough time has gone by for it to be OK.

I wonder how many other young women had the nerve to say no to the secret service, though.
----

Return to Harry's Bar (Paris)

I worked my way through some middle-aged, slick-haired folk and asked the blond barman, “Is there a spot for one person?”

He indicated a table in the far corner, blocked by people sitting on either side.

“Scuse me.” I spoke inaudibly, hoping they would sense my presence. At last I swallowed and just shoved through. As I was squeezing past, the barman arrived to ask the man on the right if he could give me room, and to take my order.

“We don’t serve wine." He didn't like my order.

“What do you have?”

The only things that sounded appealing were champagne and cognac. I chose cognac. Two fellows sat in front of me, and a couple to the right. They all stared at me, as if requiring some explanation for my presence.

“I was here once eight years ago,” I said.

The man who wouldn’t move, a thick-lipped, heavy-lidded man whose every part seemed a bit too big for the whole, replied, “The place hasn’t changed, and neither have you.”

Suppressing an inward yawn, I got out my book and started reading. The same guy said, “You look like Jody Foster.”

“Thank you.”

"We mean it.” His small friend nodded. His friend was almost the opposite of him in looks – dark-haired and sharp-featured. “You look like her in her good days. Good for you. Not for her.”

I smiled wanly. They chatted in French some more. Then the sharp-featured guy asked, “What brings you here?”

“Well, I had romanticized this place in my teens.” I was going to say because of Hemingway (whom I stopped liking right after my teens*), but before I could continue, the flaccid man shouted:

“I knew it!” He looked at his friend in victory.

“He thinks he’s very good at understanding people right away," said his friend.

“I am amazing at it. For example, today I correctly analyzed a man’s entire character, based on his screen saver.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“It’s the thing that your computer puts on when you haven’t touched it for awhile.”

“I know that. I mean, what was the screen saver?”

“A picture of a kid-kart. Like Speed Racer.” He looked extremely self-satisfied, and somewhat nostalgic for that afternoon. I neglected to ask him what his characterization had been. After he finished reminiscing about the kid-cart man, he came back to me:

“You have come back to Paris and searched out this bar, which you visited eight years ago, for romance. I knew it – why else would you be sitting here reading what is no doubt a woman’s novel....”

Now it was my turn to interrupt. “I would hardly call this a woman’s novel.” (I was reading A Dance to the Music of Time.)

“It is not all about love?”

“The author won a Nobel Prize.” (I’m not sure on that, but in any case, he should have.)

“Did he win a Booker Prize?” That seemed to matter to them more. I shook my head.

“He wrote in the '50s.”

“What’s it about, then?”

“It follows some young men from public school onwards.”

The little man whispered, “It is British English?” He spoke in a half-conspiratorial tone, as if he wanted to hide this literary side of himself from his more blustery friend. I nodded. I read some more. They spoke French again. (I should mention that their English was perfect. I almost doubted that they were French, and were just Americans pulling my leg, but somehow, their characters could be nothing but French. No amount of language lessons can do away with one’s personality.)

The big man asked, “What do you think of Paris?”

"It's wonderful."

“What do you think of French people?”

"Very nice."

“No one has been mean? I thought all Americans hated French people. They make it sound like we are all killing each other.”

I had no idea what he meant by the latter, but his friend quickly corrected him, “It is the newspapers that say that, not the people. You’ve been reading the New York Post too much.”

“Bah, the New York Post! I will never read that newspaper again!”

I almost got the idea that the paper had mounted a smear campaign against him, so violent was his reaction. Then, he asked me what I did.

“I'm a computer programmer. Were you going to guess that?”

“Oh, I didn’t get that far. I was not even close to even thinking about what you did. My friend, here, is in computers. He is a salesman. He knows all about that stuff.”

His friend demurred.

“You have to understand something to sell it," the big man argued.

“Well, maybe.”

“Oh, yes, you do. You understand it all perfectly.”

I asked him what area he was in. He said java applications for mobile phones. What company? A small one, you wouldn’t know it.

The big guy said, “A little company by the name of International Business Machines.”

The small guy shook his head, as if he were a humble rich man who didn’t want attention drawn to his wealth, so as not to make others uncomfortable. I decided to go back to my book at this point for good. Soon afterwards, they got up and said that if I came back the next night, maybe I’d see them. They also continued to bemoan my choice in drink, saying I should have had some apple-based spirit instead.

*See comments.

Bamboozled in LA

I went out with Kelly last night. I had wanted to go to Joxer Daly's, but she insisted on going to Fabio's on Abbott Kinney, as she has a crush on the waiter. (When I complimented her prowess at hitting on the waiter, she confessed, "Well, I had two shots and a glass of amaretto before you came by.")

There were two guys celebrating a birthday at the next table. They ended up buying us each a glass of port.

"So, what do you guys do?" Kelly asked.

The one guy hemmed and hawed and seemed embarrassed. But then, as if deciding to make it a game, he perked up: "I'm either really busy or I have nothing to do."

I guessed: "Actor or screenwriter?" He shook his head. "Director?"

He looked embarrassed again. "Art director."

"So who is your favorite director?" I asked.

"Oh, well, that's hard to say. I mean, I actually haven't worked with too many."

"No, influence-wise."

"Oh." He looked relieved. "Scorscese is good."

I asked him if he liked Kurosawa (after all, he's pretty artistic), and he looked at me blankly.

Then he started yanking off the tops of the baby bamboos growing next to us. His friend, who had a vague accent, said they were like those lizards where if you yanked off their tail, it would grow back. He said, "I used to do that as a kid."

"The tail? Oh jeez, all this time I thought it was the head."

No one laughed. Kelly just smiled wanly. Then I remembered what my mom told me: "Kellas, beautiful girls don't need to be cracking jokes all the time."*

They left.

"I can't believe they didn't know who Kurosawa was," said a voice from beyond the bamboo. "God, anyone can call themselves an art director nowadays."

It turned out the voice belonged to a 23 year old cinematographer. He and his friend seemed nice enough, so I chatted with them for quite a while. (All this time the waiter was refilling our wine and sometimes sitting down with us. I poured mine in the bushes, as I had to drive.)

I ended up leaving Kelly there, still waiting to get the waiter's phone number at 11:30 pm.

--

*That may sound conceited, but remember, a mother is obliged to call her daughter beautiful.

Golf, heroin, improper postures, etc.

I'm just back from buying a Cobra 9-iron...as well as an iron for every other conceivable occasion. I was going to buy my clubs one at a time, until I thought, why? The golf shop threw in a free bag, some balls and a video (I had asked for Caddyshack, but they don't carry it, so I got Golf for Dummies). I should have asked how to carry the bag -- I realized when getting it out of my car that I have no idea how the straps work, so I carried it up clasped in my arms, like an unconscious body. Right now I've got it propped up in front of me, where I can gaze lovingly at them.

I read a couple books that if you haven't read, I highly recommend: Grand Slam (about Bobby Jones), and The Greatest Game Ever Played (about the 1913 US Open). They're both by Mark Frost, and fantastic books, even if one's not into golf. They reassured me that I was normal: I was getting so obsessed with going to the driving range, it was embarrassing -- I even lied to my dad once about where I was going, because he kept making remarks like, 'Everything in moderation.' As if it were a heroin addiction...well, I suppose heroin isn't good even in moderation.

Anyway, the people in the book actually slept with their clubs, which I don't do, and built their own backyard courses out of tin cans and dirt (which I can't do, because I live in an apartment).

But, my swing is still erratic. Sometimes I go and can't get the ball in the air, and then men insist on coming up to me and giving me tips, which I've gotten better at politely ignoring. One reason I got really bad for awhile was because I had so many mutually contradicting tips in my head -- some guy even came up and told me to 'spread my legs.' That just does not seem like a thing you should ever be able to tell a stranger.

This post, it's so cute!

Back when I was living with G, his friend, Polly, came for a week-long visit. I was home alone when she rang the bell. I opened the door, but before I could get a word out, she started talking away and didn’t stop until she left. Mostly, she said, “How cute!” For variety, she also said, “That’s great!” and, “Wow!”

"You're so not what I was expecting!" she said, looking me over. "Look at you, you're so cute!"

We were still in the foyer at that point, and I was already wishing G would get back so that he could take over the conversation.

“Your place is so great! It’s so cute!” She hadn’t even seen it, yet.

I made a couple attempts at light-hearted jokes, but before I could get to the punchline, she'd cut me off, saying: “Oh, you’re so funny!"

She said, “That’s so cute!” so many times about things which were not cute, that it was almost like she had that disease where you blurt out obscenities without meaning to...only, she blurted out inane, cheerful comments.

I'm not sure why, but I ended up talking about the Holocaust much more than usual during her visit.

Remember the medlar

Another tidbit from my 2003 diary:

On the flight home, I sat next to a couple of drunken businessmen. I tried to ignore them, but eventually my neighbor lost interest in the flight attendant and leaned over into my space.

"Are you in school?"

I shook my head.

"But you're reading Adam Smith."

"Yes, but I'm not in school."

"Why are you reading it, then?"

"It's a great book."

“Oh, but he oversimplified a lot of things. I mean, that whole organic viewpoint of economics. He was just copying Darwin.” His professorial air only slightly reeked of alcohol.

"But Adam Smith published this around 1776." He didn’t seem to understand the implication, so I continued: “Darwin lived in the 1800s.”

“Oh...you had me there.” It didn't look like he cared much, though. He ordered another drink. Then, referring to the ink on my hand, he asked, "Did you go out last night?" He smiled at what he must've guessed was our common bond. “I stayed out until 4 AM myself."

"No, that's the word, medlar. I wrote it on my hand to remember it, because supposedly, the oil from the medlar nut is so tasty, goats in Morocco climb trees to eat them." It did look more like a smudge than a word, I suppose. (Note: I don't know where I got this word from. I just did a text search on 'Wealth of Nations,' and it didn't turn up.)

Silence. Then I noticed his complexion. On a healthier day, I'm sure he would have taken the medlar on (for it definitely has an organic point of view).

Now I felt like being inquisitive. "Did you make it to work today?"

"Nah, I woke up at 1 PM." He gave a sour laugh. "I slept through my own talk."

"Will that hurt you at work?"

He shrugged with the remnants of bravado left over from last night -- 1/2 hangover, 1/2 resignation.

I read my book in peace the rest of the way home.