Day 18: Sit next to me

A couple of years ago someone tweeted the terrifying dystopian future you see above. Makes you shudder, right? Or wrong. I hope wrong or you're probably reading the wrong blog.

I'm not giving away any secrets if I tell you I am a proud, life-long liberal, and that future up there, that makes this small-town girl from rural Iowa giddy with possibilities. Imagine the conversation those two might have if one of them didn't have her face in her phone. Imagine the stories they might tell each other. The common ground they might find. I want to eavesdrop. Hell, I want to join in. Or maybe they'd just talk about the weather, because .... people are just people. Neither a wig nor a burka makes them anything other than human.

Unfortunately a lot people are terrified of people who are different from them. They've been fed a load of xenophobic horseshit to keep them fearful and under control and guarantees they will direct their anger at someone other than the ultra-rich sons of bitches who are the real problem in this country.

I got messages like that too as I was growing up, but it was the 60's and then the 70's, and I wasn't buying it. I was suspicious of sexism and racism and all the many other -ism's, much to my dad's dismay. Let's just say we did a lot of pounding on the kitchen table and never resolved our differences before he died when I was 24 and he was 46.

I lived in a town where the one time a black family (I have no idea where they came from) showed up at the public swimming pool, all the parents hurried up there and got their kids out. I wasn't at the pool that day, but word spread fast that there was a family of (insert any offensive racist name you know here) were in the swimming pool. I jumped on my bike and headed for the pool so I could swim with the black children so they wouldn't be alone in the pool. So I could join the Civil Rights Movement. They were gone and the pool was empty by the time I got there. I didn't get to make up for the cruelty of some of my neighbors. I was naive enough then to think that was possible.

I don't mean to sound like I never got out of that small town. My family did go on vacations to Yellowstone, Colorado, and Michigan. My dad liked to drive the back roads, so as we passed through South Dakota we sometimes drove through Indian reservations, as they were called at the time. I'm not going to repeat what my dad said about the Native Americans who lived on the reservations. The poverty there was obviously even worse than where I came from, but I didn't believe it was for the reasons my dad spouted. Needless to say, we didn't stop and get acquainted. Not that the people whose homes we were driving past were eager to meet us. They wished, and still wish, my ancestors had stayed in Europe. Rightly so.

When I left home at age 17, I moved to Iowa City and later a little ways north to Cedar Rapids. I got jobs working as a bartender. Now maybe I could meet some people who didn't look just like me.

The guy who trained me to tend bar at a Ramada Inn in Iowa City, Michael St. John, was from Mexico. He didn't call himself a Mexican though. He said he was an Indian, and he was proud of his heritage. I loved his stories about home. He taught me how to make a classic Margarita and he got a lot of middle-aged men laid in those motel rooms. He would put one foot up on a chair, strum his guitar, and serenade their wives with love songs while they swooned. When he sang "Please Release Me" you'd have thought Elvis himself was trying to woo his way into their big white cotton panties. They dripped. I was not naive though. I  knew as I stood behind the bar and poured drinks while he raked in the tips that he wouldn't dare walk up to one of those women under any other circumstances and flirt with her. He was only safe so long as he had his hands on that guitar.

A couple of years later when I was tending bar in a disco in Cedar Rapids, I met someone much like the transgender woman in the photo, a performer who called herself Bovine LeSwine. She told me how the saleswomen in the shoe department at JC Penney were openly rude to her, and wouldn't let her try on heels, even though she had money to buy them. And one night after the disco closed, I cleaned up her face and gave her ice in a towel after some guys jumped her after her show at another bar and beat her up. It was pretty bad, but we didn't call the police. I already knew it wasn't cool to be different; I learned it wasn't safe either.

I also learned not to take tips from the Arab students (male, of course), because they thought they were buying me with their tips, and they got pretty angry when they found out I was married and a tip was just a tip. A couple of those men were frighteningly persistent and made me glad for hefty doormen.

For a while, I worked for two Lebanese brothers who owned another popular disco, and I loved it when they took me home for dinner. Their mother didn't speak much English, but her food was delicious. And different from anything I'd ever eaten. Mothers like her are universal. I'm one now myself.

I think my dad would have liked it if I'd learned to be suspicious of people from other countries, of different races, after I left home, but that didn't happen. Quite the opposite. These few experiences only made me want more diversity. I still lived in a fairly monotonous, I mean homogeneous, world while I was in Iowa. I knew there was more out there.

I finally got out of Iowa when the Air Force sent LtColEx to Sacramento. I will never forget my first trip to the zoo. People from all over the world, speaking many languages, wearing clothing of every kind, crowded together like the city of Babel to see the animals. It was amazing! I went back over and over the year we lived there, and not so much to see the animals. In fact, I couldn't tell you anything at all about the animals now. I often just sat on a bench and watched and listened to the people, marveling at the array of cultures.

I'm not going to go through my whole long life since I left Iowa and tell you about everybody I've met who was different from me. Even I don't write blog posts that long. But I will tell you I haven't lost my desire to connect with people who come from different life experiences from mine. I've gone out of my way to meet people who are different from me in various ways. Maybe it's because I'm a writer. Or maybe I'm a writer because I'm fascinated by people's stories and backgrounds, their cultures and how we are different and the same.

Unless you too grew up pre-internet in a small town in Iowa (or any other state, I would imagine), you can't know how stultifying and stifling homogeneity can be. I think my craving for meeting people -- or hell, let's just start with one person -- from another race or another culture or another country started when I was born. My parents lost me one time at the Greyhound bus depot in Des Moines when I was two. They finally found me talking to some guy in a phone booth. OK, that sounds bad, like I was in a phone booth with a strange man who probably wasn't from Krypton. What I imagine happened though was that he was talking on the phone, and I, being two and not knowing that he wasn't talking to me, was talking to him about something that made no sense at all, if he were even paying attention. Let's just say I've never met a stranger, and my parents were never able to beat that out of me, although they did try.

Back to the photo at the top. It's an old one, but sadly I think it's still relevant. We're still getting the message that people who are different from us, whether it's a different culture or shade of skin or sexual orientation or political affiliation*, are suspect. Dangerous.** The enemy. They're trying to take something from us that we don't want to give.

I just don't want to live that way. I'm not sure why my dad wasn't able to indoctrinate me. Maybe it was the times, but I think it was something inherent in my nature. And I'm grateful for that. I consider it one of my superpowers. Sorry, Dad. If I believed in Heaven, I'd hope you found out there are a lot of people there, and they don't all look like you. I don't believe in Heaven (or Hell) though, so I'm glad I came with that lesson pre-learned here on Earth.


*I get stuck on that last one in the list, because political affiliation does make some people dangerous and I am afraid of some people because of their politics. So that's a complicated one, and it's probably another post, but I probably won't write it. I get enough politics on Facebook. But I will say, the only way I've found to cross a river of differences is to try to meet on a bridge and try to find common ground. Hard as that is. And as long as it's safe.

** I am not ignoring that there are dangerous people out there, and someone who is not dangerous for me might be dangerous for someone else. And vice versa. 

Day 17: Poetry Sunday: Feminist Verse

Someone shared the first poem below on a Facebook group I'm in and I've just got to share it here. It's brutal. It's courageous. It's a little bitter, and I love dark chocolate. Don't tell me you don't like poetry. That you don't understand it most of the time. This is not your English teacher's Yeats. It's the kind of poetry I would have shared with my high school juniors and seniors when I was teaching creative writing in a school for the arts. It's the kind of poetry that tells stories. It's the kind of poetry that slaps you with the truth so hard you have to listen to it again. Like a wine glass thrown against a wall. Listen .... but maybe not at work.

Pack of Bitches by Glori B. and Teresa Johnson




Damn, Girl by Glori B.




Dogwalker's Lament by Julia Gaskill




If you like spoken word poetry like the ones above, the Write About Now YouTube channel has about a million. If you don't like poetry, stay tuned. Tomorrow is a new day. Monday. Tomorrow is Monday.

Day 16: In my CD player: Blue Heron Trio

Hidden Nests
Artist: Kate Santucci
From Reticula's private collection
Photo credit: Kate Santucci

I'm always surprised when the posts I worry most about publishing -- the ones where I crack open my heart and spread a little bit of the soft part on a cracker -- are the ones that get the most positive response. Several people told me in person today how much they liked last night's post and I'll admit I was relieved more than anything that I apparently didn't sound like a whiny baby who can't let go of the past. Hell, I'm always relieved when somebody reads to the end of a post.

I was at some friends' open studio tonight to see some art and listen to some music (more on that below) when one of my friends remarked that none of that would have happened if I'd been a boy. It would have been "boys will be boys" and a smack on the butt. Get out there and win the game. A starting senior on the boys basketball team who had been playing varsity for three years and starting for the past two would never have been benched for smoking and drinking off season, during the summer. Never.

I can't believe I hadn't considered that once during all those years decades of regret as I lay awake nights trying to change history with my mind. It really fucking pisses me off. I mean I was already pissed off, but I'm even more pissed off. Both at Coach Larsen and at myself for blowing it so bad.

I can't change it now though so ...

I'll get off that topic and tell you about the open studio I went to tonight. My friend Chicken Grrrl, who has been mentioned here many times over the years, is a talented encaustic artist who shares a studio in an old factory complex with a jazz trio, Blue Heron Trio. They have a room of their own, in other words. I'm jelly, but not in a bad way.

Once a month they open the studio to family and friends for an evening of art and music. Chicken Grrrl works whatever magic she's got going on her big work table and shows people how she makes her stunning creations with bees wax and oil paints and the bones of imaginary creatures, and Blue Heron Trio plays sublime music while the rest of us drink wine and eat cookies and mixed nuts and exotic cheeses.

I intended to open a new blog just for reviews this month, but I haven't gotten to it, so let me tell you about Blue Heron Trio's latest CD, which was released about a month ago. It's been playing in my van for weeks now, because both my 8-year-old granddaughter Coraline and I love it and not just because we're listening to friends. I have lots of other friends who are musicians and I don't listen to them on repeat for weeks at a time.

The CD, titled Other Side of the Tracks, is a mix of originals, jazz standards, and unexpected covers that are so tight they could only come from musicians who have been playing together for 20 years.

Front woman Elisha Frontz sounds (and looks) both innocent and pin-up sexy, sweet and a little shy, except when she's tying you to the bed post and snacking on your heart. Her voice is so sultry you want to fan yourself like a church lady. She also plays a mean vibraslap, in case you've forgotten who's really in charge. Phil Myers sings harmonies and plays guitar and saxophone, never at the same time. His sax winds its way around Frontz's vocals, smooth and sometimes dirty, like a shot of old smoky scotch or a newspaper blowing down a dark city street. Piano player and backup vocalist Dave Santucci rounds out the trio, holding down the bass and setting the tone with surprising, yet often classic, riffs and sexy glissandos. With those nimble fingers, you'd imagine he'd also be good at untying tight knots and breaking into safes. His piano probably thanks him for playing it and offers to bake him cookies after she's smoked a satisfied cigarette.

The first song on the album, "The Devil's Love Song," is an original written by Frontz after her daughter had an experience with a nasty boy at school. It is poetry set to music and it's the one Coraline asks me to play over and over. Our other favorite is a cover of "Goodnight Moon" by Shivaree from the Kill Bill 2 soundtrack. It's spooky and sexy and dark and the original doesn't even get to lick the boots of this cover. Speaking of, one of my other favorites is a cover of the Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walking," only all grown up and not a bit campy like the original. Another cover the trio has taken and made their own is Billy Holiday's "You Don't Know What Love Is." It's so poignant and sad I literally cried at their CD release party. It's risky to play classic Billy Holiday, but this cover does its own thing. It's like a new song with its own story. And finally, we love their original "This Lonely Nation," written shortly after the presidential election in 2016. It's like a sooty, gritty story set in a dystopian .... well, we all know what's going on in our country. The vibraslap is an especially appropriate instrument for this song. Oh, and Frontz's super talented daughter Penny Fisher sings some backup for her mom. (Watch this blog for the release of her future album.)

I'm not going to describe every song on the CD. Boring! Better to listen. You can find some of Blue Heron Trio's earlier album on CD Baby or Amazon Music, but in my opinion this new CD is their best work. It's the culmination of years of playing together, and it speaks a truth that only comes from musicians with their experience and dedication to the muse.

Day 15: Benched

Basketball season started for real tonight. Coraline and I have been following the women's basketball team for my alma mater for the past four years. Of course, Coraline didn't watch much when she was only four, but now she sits and watches most of the game. I watch from the edge of my seat, ready at any second to get in there and play.

OK, I'd be killed in the first 15 seconds, but I did play basketball in high school. It was my consuming passion during the season, and it is also the home of one of my greatest regrets. One that comes back to haunt me after every game we go to. One that I will only talk about now that my mom is gone, because for all these years she never knew what happened ....

I am not an athletic person. I was often the last one chosen in gym class, even after the special ed kids. I was just slow. I don't have quick muscles. I have no idea why, but I wanted to play basketball, even with little proof I would ever get off the bench.

Girls basketball is huge in Iowa. Almost as huge as wrestling. But in my little home town we hadn't had a girls basketball team since the 50's, when a girl was killed during a game. She hit her head on a wall or something, and that ended our girls basketball program.

When I was in 6th grade though, enough time had passed and the idea that we needed a girls basketball program started gaining traction. My friends and I canvassed the town gathering signatures on petitions.  I'm not sure we helped the cause, but a new girls basketball program was born just in time for me to play in 7th grade.

I was awful. I couldn't get the ball to the basket, much less put it through the hoop. Did I mention I'm slow? I had hardly ever watched basketball on TV, and even if I had, professional basketball is nothing like what we were doing. I was awful and I knew nothing about how to play basketball, but I loved it. Loved. It.

I hardly ever got to play. Maybe the last 15 seconds in a couple of games. I didn't care. I even liked to practice.

Then when I was a freshman something happened. The first junior varsity (JV) game we played, one of our starters got hurt. The coach put me in. I have no idea why he put me in that game. I guess he didn't know how bad I was. It was the first quarter, not the last 15 seconds. I was ready. I was fierce. I wanted that ball so bad the girl I was guarding whimpered every time someone threw it to her. I smelled her fear and it made me into a super jock. (Not really, but in comparison .... yeah.)

I got to play the whole game. And not long after that I was starting on the JV team and suiting up on varsity, where I sometimes played more than 15 seconds. I wasn't fast. I'm not that tall (5' 7" before I lost an inch). I can't jump high. But I was mean and I played with everything I had. By sophomore year I was playing both JV and varsity, and usually started varsity. Junior year I started all the games and missed All Conference by one vote..

My parents came to almost all of my games, driving all over southwest Iowa, even in snow storms. My mom yelled so much she lost her voice every time. I was an anomaly among the women in our family. None of us were athletic. Except me. I could play basketball. They never said it, but I think they were proud of me.

And it was amazing for me too. I was lean and strong. I could run for miles. I was a jock, and I was part of a team. It gave me confidence I'd never had in every part of my life. I had become someone else.

And then I fucked it all up. I mean I fucked it up hard. I was at a little beach at a little lake about 8-10 miles from my home town with a friend. We were lying out in the sun smoking Virginia Slims and drinking vodka in Grape Crush. By the time I saw our assistant coach walk across the beach it was too late. I was busted.

I guess it didn't matter that it was out of season. I never started another game. I sat on the bench my entire senior year. I still practiced just as hard. I practiced with the girls who were still starting, my team, as if I were one of them. I had always loved the practice as much as the games, just as long as I got to play. But my ass was on the bench, game after game after game. Didn't matter that I was better than the girls who replaced me out there, and we lost games.

The coach never said a word to me about it, which I've always thought was a shitty thing to do. He never told me why I was benched and I was too proud to ask. I thought I knew the answer. My mom was devastated. She sat there game after game and wondered why he wasn't putting me in the game. She wanted to go talk to him and I wouldn't let her. I didn't want her to find out what I'd done. And I didn't talk to him either because nobody had helped me learn those kind of skills. Every game I sat on that fucking bench. Sometimes he would try to put me in with 15 seconds left. It was an insult. I wouldn't look at him and I didn't go in. Even writing this I'm trying not to cry.

He cared more about punishing me than he did the team. Or the fact that I was just a kid and maybe he could have tried to guide me in a better direction. If he'd let me play, I would have given up cigarettes, booze, pot. All of it. I would have stayed home on the weekends. And let me just say for the record, there may have been one or two goody-two-shoes on the team who didn't smoke and drink, but most of us partied as hard as we played. I was just stupid enough to get caught .... off season.

I never told my mom what happened. Over the years she would wonder about it and I said I didn't know. She died last year or I wouldn't be writing this now. I guess I'm ashamed about it. I have obsessed about how I could have handled it better. How I could have worked my way back on the team. How I could have gotten back on the court that last year of high school. How desperately I missed it.

After we lost the first game of sectionals -- a game we would have won if I'd been playing -- I took off my uniform and left it on the floor of the locker room. I didn't even go to the awards banquet. I worked that night. I didn't put my letter on my letter jacket.

I don't think I learned a single lesson from that experience. It was just devastating. Humiliating. Maybe I could have crawled on my knees and talked to the coach. I wish I had tried. And maybe I did learn one thing. I never treated any of my students like that. I never knowingly humiliated any of them like that. I still hate him for doing that. I don't think the punishment suited the crime. I don't think he did his job. I think he was small about it. So fuck you, Coach Larsen.

See? I still obsess about it. And that's the other lesson. Thinking about the past doesn't change it. Never will. It might give insight into how you can do better in the future, but I was never going to get a chance to play basketball again. That's what I lost. The last year I could have done something I loved with all my heart. All these decades later, it still hurts.

So I go to the games with Coraline. And I sit on the edge of my seat, ready to block a shot or steal the ball. In my head I'm out there playing with them -- certainly much better than I ever could in real life. Like a million times better. And then I come home and I remember my senior year on the bench. Not the games I played that made me feel like I could do anything. But the games I sat on the bench and wanted to die.

One more thing. I did not stop smoking and drinking that year. In fact, I partied with a vengeance. I drank and smoked pot before school whenever I got the chance. I cut classes. I got grades just good enough to keep my parents off my ass. And two weeks after graduation, I left and made my way out into the big world with the intention of never coming back. And I never played a game of basketball again.

Day 14: Throwback Thursday: Ghetto Tattoo

I think I've mentioned already that I've had more trouble than usual settling on topics for posts this NaBloPoMo, and tonight was no different. I suspect my muse, Dolores, has other writing she'd like me to do and she's not giving me much help. Also, my laptop is a piece of shit with my son, who is giving one last shot to fixing a battery problem. Excuses. The truth is when I started writing tonight, I realized what I wanted to say about what I was writing about would take a lot longer than I dare give it tonight. My mornings come earlier than they did when I started doing this.

So I'm going to continue working on that piece, which might not even end up here, and tonight I'm going to cheat and share one of my favorite posts from the past. May 17, 2012, to be exact. It's from another time in my life, a time when I had the freedom to say yes, and sometimes my friends worried about what I'd do next. But I'll let it speak for itself. It's Throwback Thursday, but I'm still writing.

Ghetto Tattoo

Yesterday on my way home from school I drove past a surprising sight. A rather fair man was standing on the steps in front of his house talking on the phone. He was shirtless and across his glowing-in-the-sun lower abdomen was a large tattoo that read "GHETTO." I stared as long as I could and then drove on to the stop sign at the end of the block.

And then I sat there. Damn it. I wanted a photo of that tattoo. I'd seen some pretty rough looking people on that street. It's not a street I would want to live on, in fact. That guy with the tattoo would probably be considered a rough looking character by most people. He had a fucking tattoo that said GHETTO on his belly, after all. He might not appreciate me gawking at him.

That tattoo was really calling to me though. It was big. It said GHETTO. And when had I ever been scared of rough looking characters?

I threw my van into reverse and backed up the way I'd come on the one-way street. It curves, so of course I hit the curb -- three times. Of course I did. Way to let him know a crazy woman is backing the wrong way down a one-way street. I finally gave up stopped about 100 feet away and walked in the street to the house.

As I came into view around the bushes that hid most of the porch, a big boxer hit the end of his chain, barking a warning greeting. The guy yelled at him, "Down, Psycho! Stop barking at the lady."

I said, "I'm sorry to bother you...." Psycho was still barking and lunging, so the guy yelled at him again, said "Just a minute" to whomever he was talking to, and walked toward me. "Psycho, I said shut up!" He made a menacing move toward the boxer. The dog stopped barking, but he stayed at the end of his chain, pulling. I'm pretty sure he wanted a pat on the head, but I didn't get close enough to see. He might have wanted to eat my liver.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your phone call," I said. "I don't mean to be rude, but I wondered if I could take a photo of your tattoo." I held my crappy dumb phone up and wished I had my fancy SLR with me. I could see he had a bunch of other tattoos on various parts of his body.

"Hold on," he said into the phone. "There's a lady here trying to talk to me."

"I was ... ummm ... driving by and I saw your tattoo and ... I really don't want to be rude, but could I take a photo of your tattoo? My daughter loves tattoos and I like to send her photos of unusual tattoos I see."

"Sure. Go ahead." He posed. I took the photo.

"Mom, I gotta go. Some lady wants to take pictures of my tattoos." He snapped his phone shut. I smiled inside. He was talking to his mom.

"I got all of these in prison," he said. Oh.

"No way," I said. "They let you have tattoo guns in prison?" I looked closer at the ghetto tattoo. It looked pretty intricate for a prison tattoo. Because I've seen so many prison tattoos.

"Nah. We made the tattoo guns. Every single one of these I got when I was in prison. They were all done with a homemade tattoo gun in prison."

He told me how they made a needle out of the coil in a disposable lighter. They'd break the lighter, pull out the coil, heat it to straighten it into a wire, sand it down, and then sterilize it with alcohol.

"Here look. I got more on my back too. You can show her those too." I walked around him and took a photo of his back.

I asked him if they used ballpoint pen ink. (Elvira tattooed three little stars on her ankle when she was about 15 using ballpoint pen ink and a safety pin. She told me that's how they did it in prison. Suburban teenagers know so much.)

Tattoo guy said the only thing they used from a pen was the barrel. They taped or melted the plastic barrel to hold the lighter-spring needle in the machine. They used a motor from a CD player to power the tattoo gun.

To make the ink, he said they burned Vaseline and made a clumpy product they called "sood." I spelled it back to him to make sure he wasn't saying soot. He was missing a tooth in front, and I wasn't sure I understood him right. I think he said sood. Anyway, the sood was mixed with alcohol to make the ink. It was clumpy, he said, but it was still ink.

"I had no idea that's how prison tattoos were made. My daughter will love to hear how you did these. She wants to be a tattoo artist," I said. "Thanks for letting me take a photo and for talking to me. I didn't mean to interrupt your conversation with your mom."

"Hey, you need to take a photo of this one too." He flexed his pec. "This is Psycho. He's not mean." He pointed his thumb at the dog.

"I'm not scared of him," I said, which was almost true. He didn't look like he wanted to gnaw on me, but I didn't tempt him. "I've known other boxers. They're sweet dogs." Psycho slobbered a little and pushed his stubby nose toward me.

"I've got three more inside, but this here tattoo is that dog, Psycho," he said. "Take a picture of that one to show your daughter."

I took a photo of the tattoo. I wondered if anybody had pointed out the spelling, but I decided not to be the one to mention it. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe there are times when it's best to turn off the external editor.

I thanked him and started to walk back to my van, but he stopped me. "All of these are 12 years old. That's how long it's been since I was in prison. Twelve years. I ain't been in that kind of trouble since," he said.

"That's good," I said. "That's a long time to stay out of prison."

"How old is your daughter?" he asked.

"Twenty-one."

"Oh, 21, huh. Well, I'm 33. That's why I was askin'."

Lightbulb! "Oh, yeah, well she's only 21 .... and you're ... you know .... 33," I said.

"Yeah. Well, if she wants to be a tattoo artist, tell her to get a license and not do it in her own home. She could get in trouble and lose her license if she gets caught doing that." (The irony did not escape me.)

I promised I'd warn her not to give tattoos in her house, and it was time for me to go. But before I left I took a photo of the real Psycho, who posed like this when I told him to smile for the camera. Awwww. He probably didn't want to eat my liver after all.