Remembering James Tate

I had the great privilege of hearing James Tate read twice in my life. The first time was approximately a decade ago in Seattle at Open Books. What I remember about that reading, in terms of the man, is that Tate seemed to be tipping prematurely into old age.

Fast-forward to just a couple years ago when I was able to attend his reading at USC. It was clear then that the gods of health had not been kind to Tate. I assumed he had a stroke at some point prior because he had all the telltale signs of neurological injury. This, I suppose, is unremarkable only in that there is no explanation for why some people are the lucky ones and some get the short shrift. On James Tate's behalf, I felt that life was unfair. That hasn't changed. Grace seems to anoint haphazardly. 

But if it was unremarkable that I was seeing Tate's body being destroyed by what I would call a too-rapid aging, what was remarkable is that, during that reading, I saw him carefully, with cane, make his way to the lectern, and I heard him push his poems out from a mouth that resisted working. On the one hand, it was difficult, in terms of empathy, to listen; on the other hand, it was profound that each poem hung in the air, fully assembled, as if Tate repeatedly gave up ghosts, which is what, in some respects, poems are. They live and interact with us even as the body has been taken away. I remember feeling, at the time, that he would not be with us for much longer, and that made me sad. Thus, I return again and again to the second half of "The Lost Pilot:"

...All I know   

is this: when I see you,   

as I have seen you at least

once every year of my life,   

spin across the wilds of the sky   

like a tiny, African god,

I feel dead. I feel as if I were   

the residue of a stranger’s life,   

that I should pursue you.

My head cocked toward the sky,   

I cannot get off the ground,   

and, you, passing over again,

fast, perfect, and unwilling   

to tell me that you are doing   

well, or that it was mistake

that placed you in that world,

and me in this; or that misfortune   

placed these worlds in us.

And all I can think is that Tate is, a lifetime later, finally able to pursue his father. That he has finally gotten off the ground, and that it was indeed misfortune that was placed inside Tate, which is why he was taken from us too early. But if I believed in any kind of grace, I hope he is a satellite now.

James Tate's poems manage to temper wonder with wit; moreover, he made the best of accessibility in that the poems are generous to readers even as they're absurd sometimes, and thought-provoking. Some of the greatest moments in the arts are when the most profound mysteries of the human condition are presented in the guise of humor. Tate did this. He will be sorely missed even if his voice still lingers on our bookshelves.

Lessons Learned from Big Hero 6

The villain in Big Hero 6 harbors great animosity, triggered by the fallout from loss. Darkness wells up inside him and eclipses any good he may have had left. He plots revenge (a familiar trope), and loses his humanity. This serves to remind us that, if we don't tend to the issues causing us pain, we can become lesser monsters in our own right. What we fail to reconcile can ruin us.

I wanted another child but have had two miscarriages instead. My only child has developmental issues. I am now too old to have another. I must come to accept these things. Meanwhile, I have dear, dear friends with the family they have always wanted, the two or more "normal" children. I have dear, dear friends who are pregnant right now. I have a younger sister with an infant I have never met.

I don't have difficulty feeling happy for them, exactly, but I don't want to talk with them about the things they have that I don't. At least right now. I'd rather surround myself with women whose experience of motherhood is similar to my own. That is, whose story is complicated and made up of both high points and low. It feels familiar.

But there are times when I admit my antidepressants have given me a nice, thick rind, which allows me to cope, to be capable, to be high-functioning. Here's the problem with a rind, though: The way we chose to ripen what is inside us determines whether our pulp will be bitter or sweet. I struggle with this at times. Choosing between sourness and sweetness. Practicing gratitude. Trying not to be a dick because other people get to have more than me, especially when so many have less.

I know I don't want to lose my humanity like the man behind the Kabuki mask.

Big Hero 6 celebrates the triumphs of science. Moreover, it demonstrates how intellect can be a stand-in for strength. Hiro, and the rest of the "nerds," use their big brains to innovate. They develop tools based on quantum electronics, chemistry, electromagnetics, pyrotechnics, and so on. The heroes in this movie are such because they can out-think antagonists.

What is also made clear is that science itself is just a means to an end. In all the debates about the morality of technological and scientific advancements, we must remember that the discovery or creation of something only becomes an evil when it is used for nefarious purposes. Otherwise, it is neutral until activated.

I love the science working in my life right now. My son takes an anti-seizure medicine. You can imagine how grateful we are for that breakthrough. He takes another medication that allows him to function at a level high enough that, more often than not, he is indiscernible from the neuro-normative kids his age. I take a medication that helps me out of bed and into the morning light. We are the poster people for better living through chemistry.

Other more straight-foward points from the movie that resonate:

Nurses are important in the world of medicine (My husband is a nurse): "On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?"

Though it is debatable whether there is an afterlife, or a soul, those we have lost can remain a presence in our lives if we hold the memory of them inside us: "Tadashi is here."

Family can be a construct. For my son, who will be an only child, I hope he may find "family" outside of our small nuclear unit: "Hiro, if I could have any superpower right now, it would be the ability to crawl through this camera and give you a big hug."

There are times when we all need to be comforted: "People keep saying he's not really gone, as long as we remember him. But it still hurts."

To review:

Don't let disappointment and loss turn you into an asshole.
Remember that you can think your way out of difficult situations.
Science is your friend.
Nurses matter.
Keep the flame burning for those you mourn.
We can cultivate family.

Now available on iTunes and in stores.

Studies Show That the Breakdown of Parenting into Quantifiable Units Demonstrates That it is Largely Chore-Based

I'm thinking about parenting, and little boys, and autism spectrum disorder, and I'm thinking, again, about the way social media is a place to telegraph triumphs in the name of positivity while all of the challenges often remain unacknowledged, neither tweeted nor prominent displayed in status updates.

However, in the interest of full disclosure, you must know there are days where my five-year-old boy has me on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I don't know whether you can chalk it up to age, gender, and/or diagnosis, but being in the house with him is maddening: he doesn't talk to me about his day, he doesn't draw at the table with paper and markers, he doesn't race his Hot Wheels down the long hallway; he pinballs off the walls and furniture while making repetitive, nonsense vocalizations, and this is interspersed with opening and closing the microwave twenty times, sliding open and closed the closet doors, opening and closing the freezer, and turning the sink water on and off over and over and over again. His energy is intense and odd, and his toys remain relatively unplayed with. Then, when we leave the house, he's always afflicted with the ants-in-his-pants jitters, and if I don't keep my eye firmly on him, he'll be gone. It happened twice at the aquarium today. I was looking at a fish, and he was already in another exhibit.

Beyond this, it seems important to also mention that parenting-- which, contrary to what you may have heard-- is not always "rewarding." Perhaps, yes, in the long run when our children are moulded, with our help, into high-functioning adults: I'll use the word "rewarding" then. In the meantime, in the interest of honesty, parenting often feels like a burdensome chain of chore-based activities. From the preparation of breakfast, which must be accompanied by teaching moments (How do you ask to leave the table? Use your napkin. Don't scratch the table with your fork. And so on.) all the way to reading that bedtime story, which I can't skip because of how important it is to his future as a reader. Frankly, my friends, I'm exhausted. Parenting (on a case-by-case basis, of course) can have you close to pulling out your hair or bursting into tears. Or drinking too much wine at the end of the day, which is better, I guess, than bringing a sippy cup of gin to the mall for a mommy playdate.

And yet, and yet, and yet. It's all so paradoxical, isn't it? It's not as though I've ever thought, "Send him back." Or "Why did I become a mother?" Or "Get me the hell out of here." In fact, anytime I've ever felt that my motherhood was threatened, ever worried about my son's well-being, I've become distraught. I've wept from the immensity of my love for my boy. He is my life now, for better or for worse, and I wouldn't trade him for more nights alone in the bathtub with a pile of soggy New Yorkers stacked on the floor next to me.

Which gets me to the other half of the better or worse equation. Of course we're going to telegraph those triumphant moments, the betters for the worsts. Because those moments feel like shining achievements of sanity. Those are the "aha!" moments that remind us why we ever gave up going to shows, taking quiet trips to the art museum, or enjoying loosey-goosey nights out with the girls. Take, for example, this morning: My son walks into the kitchen and says, "I was a baby in a different house, but this is the house where I'm going to grow up to be like daddy, just like a seed grows into a tree." And I was like, "Whoa, way to be profound before I've even had my coffee."

On Influence

I have never put my head in the oven, not even to clean it. That’s what the self-clean function is for. I have lived comfortably beyond the age of thirty, never sunk into the kind of depression, clinical and of-the-ages, that drives a mother to throw open nursery windows and stuff rags under the door separating kitchen from living quarters where her two babies sleep. Never had cohorts who offed themselves, too, in garages and off bridges. Never needed time in a ward for the mad.   

Beyond my twenties when melodrama was a blood jet, when every chord struck was minor, I never thought I would be done with this, never thought, “Here, pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.”  I have never had a daddy with a Meinkampf look. Mine was pretty much a Jew, though in absentia before I was born. Not dead, just deserted. I never laid flat the patriarchy with a sing-song rhyme, was never scraped flat by the rollers of wars, wars, wars. Never spoke like Cape Cod royalty, raised in a clapboard den of privilege, though what good it did her. My upbringing was purely blue-collar, white-trash dysfunction, though my early childhood, too, was sealed…off like a ship in a bottle—beautiful inaccessible, obsolete, a fine, white flying myth. Except I never became bitter. Never despised what I lost for how it shimmers like green meadows glowing… a bush of flies. I could not make an object of my girl-self.

I never had a husband whose body hurts me as the world hurts God, who left me for a woman who mimicked my suicide after outliving the Holocaust, only taking her four-year-old daughter into the gas with her, tragedies unfolding again and again like little bloody skirts. Never had a husband whose words competed with mine. I never managed to churn out two inches of pages, a tome, of lineated grief. I have barely managed a half-inch. My thirties, for what it’s worth, were feminist-approved. I didn’t even marry until she was dead seven years. Didn’t have my only child until she was already dead eight. My boy is Right, like a well-done sum. A clean slate, with his own face on. He will never inherit a curse; he may be ordinary.

I will never be conjured by teenaged girls in their attic bedrooms, girls disgusted by their parents and cheerleaders with ponytails, eyes ringed in black, toying with the idea that dying is an art. My only novel will never compete with Catcher in the Rye. I have never needed shock therapy. I will never be portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow in a movie that romanticizes my death and turns writer’s block into an opportunity for baking. Will never have my death mocked by cinema as something radiant and well-earned. My son will never hang himself in Alaska, the family legacy of depression snuffing out my Nick and his Candlestick. We will be lucky.

I am not her nor will I ever be. I will never spend my last winter churning out the best work of my life in a nightgown in a drafty room, will never succumb to the cold. We ran away from it. I took my boy into the sun instead. My lines are not driven by fever. I will never be Sylvia. Will never walk through the valley of the shadow of death stalked by infamy. And though my career be damned, at least my family thanks me.

Unmasked

James Baldwin in Letters From a Region of the Mind makes the observation that “Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within,” which, on the surface, strikes one as sentiment bordering on the sentimental, as something pat and easily contained on a bumper sticker. Yet, as sentiment, the statement is emotionally accurate. James Baldwin knew the human heart.

Consider this: How much safer were you before love? And then: How much did you wish to cast off the hockey mask and enter the frays of romance, or of childbearing, or, even, of loving a pet that you knew would die before you? We walk around, before love, safe behind the armors of loneliness, and we ask those we deem worthy to strip it all away so that we stand there, a throbbing heart, exposed, the cages of our safety masks and curved ribs as good as gone.

Thus here I stand before you— world, fates, family— all of my masks gone, stripped down to the skin, and I ask, meekly, that you let me be in my nakedness or that you wrap me in the blankets of goodwill. Spare me the excoriation. My husband, late forties, the man I hand-picked and pursued, has just competed in a triathlon, and he is vital, a force, more alive than anyone I know. I see him pushing past all probabilities in terms of mortality, so when he rides his motorcycle home from the hospital at four in the morning after a long night of work, steer the drunk drivers the other way. 

And my son, my one and only child, the one who has already scared me, scarred me, with health concerns and mortal danger, let him outlive me, let him mourn and miss his long-dead mother. He is everyday getting farther away from that proverbial well that wishes to suck him down into darkness. Abnormal MRI, seizures, autism: He’s shrugging them off like a coat he has outgrown. In Mexico, when he fell into the deep-end of the pool, his father watched him plunge below the surface only to paddle up to where he was able to hoist himself over the side of the pool, away from tragedy and back into the waning sunlight. World, fates, family: Be safe and let me be safe.

And my two dogs? The smaller brown one has many years ahead of her. My old, white dog turned twelve last month, and I can see her eyes going milky. Her back legs slip out from underneath her, and I have to hoist her up. All ninety pounds of her. She has gotten more nervous with old age, and she can no longer hold her bowels very well. She doesn’t mean to shit on the floor, and I can feel her shame. She knows something is wrong. I clean it up with no admonishment. I just stroke her until I see her tail wag. In truth, I think she has another two years in her. When I picked her out from the homeless man’s litter twelve years ago, she could fit in a cat carrier. I was not projecting this far into the future; I did not think of her death. I just wanted to let a little love in.

Well…I Didn't See That Coming

Shitmotherfuckerfuck. Not, of course, that such profanity was screamed or whimpered, although I was surprised to hear myself whimpering having never heard such a thing before. Yet this is the kind of language I imagined my vagina would use if it could speak. My uterus and its sick heaving, me vomiting over the side of the bed as I approached transition, my asshole puckering and then failing to hold in the shit as I pushed it and my son out at three-thirty in the morning during a particularly cold March morning in Connecticut. Fuck. Motherfucker. Shit. Because birth is just as profane as it is profound. 

I suppose there are the occasional women out there who have the kind of birthing experiences to be envied. Something more like poofing feathery angels from their twats while they scrunch up their motherly faces all slick with a comely sheen of sweat, and then those babies turn into children that flit about and charm the world with their glitter glue and spangled soccer trophies. That’s okay. I don’t need to wish them into the cornfield anymore. After all, we’re made to forget the pain, to abstract it so that we don’t even have the words to describe the way our bodies are mangled. 

But if I had to describe it, I would tell the whole story. That, for example, the birthing suite and it’s tastefully muted walls, beyond a certain point, were details lost in the rage of childbirth. That the Joni Mitchell I had playing— the candy of her voice— could not be heard over my retching and keening. In fact, all of the ways that I thought I had prepared myself were as effective as closing a slider door on the tsunami crushing towards me. 

Oh, but once I couldn’t handle listening to myself whimper anymore, I called it and asked for the epidural. And the anesthesiologist swept in like a goddess in institutional blue. I sat on the end of the bed and leaned over as still and trembling as I could manage between throes, and the thick, blissful needle slipped deep into my back while I hugged the ball of my as-yet unborn son. Then…numbness. Complete, dead, utter numbness. Because she thought I should get some sleep, the epidural was proceeded by a spinal block, and my legs, the whole bottom half of me, were as rubber as bread dough. 

Thus, it seems the telling should end there. That this is the point where what was should overlay quite nicely on top of what should have been. Epidural. Bam. Birth. But— the word should, it only serves to fuel regret, self-doubt, and worthless obligations. It reminds us that although one’s cervix shouldn’t be torn during childbirth, sometimes it happens. When one commences with the process of pressing a human through a hole that begins as little more than a dimple, one should plan to expect anything. So should can be useful after all.

That, for example, my son’s heart decelerated, the machines binging and my husband going to fetch the nurse. That the nurses and doctor rocked my dead legs back and forth to dislodge my son from the birth canal. That I had to push him out before full dilation so that not only did he tear the opening of my vagina, but he rent my cervix. That he came out as pointy as a pinhead. That the doctor was stitching for so long and the blood loss was so significant, my mother almost passed out. That I would be up for more than thirty-six hours. That I would look pale and bloated in post-partum pictures. That my son, fresh from the womb, slick and a little bit purple, would look me in the face as I floated above the experience. That the minute he latched on to my breast, I became his blubbering fool. That even after all this upheaval and hurt, I would have liked to do it again. That by the time it was possible, I couldn’t.

So consider this a public service announcement, reader. Anticipate the unanticipated. The more you know about not knowing, the better prepared you'll be to be unprepared.

Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda.

Queer as a Three Guinea Bill

…the vast majority of birds and beasts have been killed by you, not by us…

—Virginia Woolf

Forgive me for being so contemplative and reticent about responding to your conservative rhetoric. Here you have dangled the so-called welfare queen in front of me and asked how we can continue to provide safety nets to the less fortunate when clearly your stereotype serves to remind me that any person “on the dole” as you like to say is just a shyster gaming the system. And this is just the tip of your ideological iceberg. I have come to understand that you do not understand why gay couples should marry, why we should put environmental protections in place, why we should reconsider gun-control laws, why we should regulate corporations, why we should invest in education, why we should offer health care reform, why we should tend to — dare I say it? — women’s issues and, in general, why we should do anything that is beneficial to anyone besides what I would call the privileged class of conservatives living in their glass houses.

            Forgive me for not responding sooner. For we, in many ways, share similar experiences here in the present that are far removed from what germinated our political beliefs. I read stories to my son before bed, and so do you, or so I imagine. We equally shake our heads in confusion and dismay when presented with a Miley Cyrus video. You eat wings with blue cheese dressing; I eat wings with blue cheese dressing. Moreover, we all claim to be thinkers, to be interested in how we can make our country a better place. But… those three dots mark a precipice, a gulf so deeply cut between us that…I have been sitting on my side…wondering whether it is any use to speak… Because, frankly, I think all of your conservative sputtering is just a politically and pseudo-religiously convenient way to validate your intolerance for anyone who isn’t white. Yeah. I’m being pejorative about that word, meaning anyone who is different, whether skin tone or otherwise, from your narrowly defined concept of what constitutes “American.”

You see, I was raised by a woman who, though young, thought she was making good decisions about love and her future, and instead found herself a single mother. Then it happened again. She met a man who, though he liked to cut loose, seemed ready to settle down into family life. Boy, was she wrong! Then my mother became a single mother of three children, all because she thought she could change a man. But I know what you must be thinking. She was clearly to blame. And her three children? The ones who, for part of the time, had to rely on government assistance for basic needs such as food? Well, according to your agenda, if a mother has somehow fucked up, so then, too, should her children pay for her poor (only in retrospect) decisions. So, too, should they be fucked by inheritance or otherwise.

Thus you claim to be Christians, but in reality, you’re just Darwinists in disguise. You say I love Jesus but then espouse a magical up-by-your-bootstraps mentality, which has worked for .001 percent of the public who were, as a matter of birth, born at rockbottom. You’re really all about survival of the fittest, but can’t admit as much, so you like to trot out the one black guy you know who beat the odds. Then you say, if he did it, so can you, but you fail to scrutinize his story, fail to recognize that he was the lucky one, the one who had a grandmother who pulled for him, who had a publicly-funded community center that kept him out of trouble, who had a clever mind and an against-all-odds imperative to not just survive, but to thrive. Who was part of the middle class. Spare me the pandering. Spare me the black republicans, the gay republicans, and the Phyllis Shlaflys. They are only representative of rare and narrow truths. 

Furthermore, you claim that you have gay friends, but if they were really your friends and not just people you shared cake with for office birthdays, you would recognize the love they have for their partners as just the same as you have for your wife (I’m pegging you as male. As white male.). If you took any environmental considerations to heart you might recognize that if you don’t do something about fossil fuel consumption now, then that son of yours, the one you like to read to, might be pretty cold in the future when he has to, by necessity, ration oil during the bitterest winters. And if we don’t come up with thoughtful gun regulations, that son of yours might be in the wrong school at the wrong time with the wrong, armed classmate. And if we leave corporations to themselves, we might forget that even if moral people function within the office parks and skyscrapers, a corporation is, by its nature, an unwieldy machine built to churn out profits. And if we fail to invest in an educational infrastructure, then any child not born into privilege must first figure out what bootstraps are because he or she never heard of them, doesn’t know where to find them, and has never been instructed on how to install and use your stupid, fucking bootstraps. And, and, and… I am reminded of the Elvis Costello song, “Tramp the Dirt Down.” Do you know it? It’s written to Margaret Thatcher, one of your people, and the last verse goes like this: Well I hope you live long now/ I pray the Lord your soul to keep/ I think I'll be going/ before we fold our arms and start to weep/ I never thought for a moment/ that human life could be so cheap/ But when they finally put you in the ground/ they'll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down.

So I guess I’ll just end this here.

Crossing Genre and the Demise of USC's MPW Program

The students in USC's MPW program were alerted to the demise of our program last week. We were made to understand that it was a "business decision," and that the program will no longer exist after spring of 2016.

I was not surprised because of several reasons. MPW is not a classic master's program in that the initials, which stand for Masters of Professional Writing, might not be recognized on someone's vitae as having the same merit as MFA or PhD. I'll get to whether or not this is reasonable. Furthermore, more petty controversies not worth mentioning here might have tainted the new dean's opinion of the program. Moreover, in terms of what qualifies as a "business decision," one can only imagine the kind of talks surrounding reputation and finances that go on behind closed doors in a private university like USC, where it's all about public relations and endowment. Beyond all of this, changes in the structure of the Writing Program suggest that it won't be using MPW students in the future to teach composition. And some overlap with the theater program and PhD program in Creative Writing and Literature might suggest redundancies in the mind of a new dean ready to prove his mettle. To show that he means "business."

So I was not particularly surprised to get the announcement. Do I think this was a good decision? Regardless of how the students feel knowing that the education listed on their resumes and vita will be defunct and require explanation to any future employers, was this the right way to pinch pennies or swipe away a program in the interest of repute? All emotions aside-- even aligning myself with pragmatism-- I still think it was a terrible idea.

Because we need interdisciplinary, cross-genre writing programs like the Masters of Professional Writing, which has little to do with the "P" and more to do with the "M" and "W." I have an MFA in poetry, and the program I attended at the University of Washington is a very good program where I learned how to be a better poet, but I also know that the poets and fiction writers did our work off in our own little enclaves where we, to a certain extent, became more polarized in how we approached genre. Our poems became more poetic and our fiction became more polished, more exemplary of good fictive prose. This is all very valuable. Long live the genre-specific MFA.

Some of us, however, really thrive in an environment where we are encouraged to use the kind of precision and figurative language usually reserved for poetry in our prose writing. Some of us become better poets when we are made to remember that there is a whole cohort of readers out there that do better with poetry when it respects the role the sentence plays in the line, and when poetry gives a nod to the kind of accessibility usually reserved for prose writing. In other words, no matter what one's literary art, we can often benefit from working outside our comfort zone, and for some of us, our comfort zone is specifically in the gray area that exists between poetry and prose. Or between playwriting and poetry. Or between creative non-fiction and poetry. Etcetera and so on.

The demise of the MPW program, which encourages, even requires, experimentation and inter-disciplinary writing, is a true loss then. What a shame to see this original program go away. What a shame to value the intensive MFA model over one which, if we're doing the work and open to new experience, makes us better writers both within and without our chosen concentrations.

The Unsung Regular

Best bar and grill in Fremont

The difference between a “bar and grill” and a gastropub is like determining the difference between a pair of trousers from The Gap versus those from Banana Republic. It’s likely that they’re cut from the same cloth, but perhaps the stitching may be a thread or two better. Only the very picky may notice, and mainly it’s the label that counts. The same can be said for designating a burger. The one from a gastropub might feature a harissa-anointed compote of heirloom peppers while the bar-and-grill burger might feature a simple, roasted pepper medley. You can be sure though, just like the trousers, that you’ll pay an extra ten dollars or so for the privilege of a gastropub burger even if, for all intents and purposes,  you’d be just as satisfied with a bar-and-grill burger. Thus a gastropub becomes one more destination restaurant when, really, what every neighborhood needs is a bar and grill. A comfortable place you can go on a whim when you realize that the chicken breasts in your fridge have started to gray. A place that welcomes children, if not begrudgingly, with untruffled french fries, a cupful of crayons, and something to draw on. A place where— to quote the often over-quoted Cheers— everybody knows your name. You can keep your gastropubs. I’ll take sassy waitresses, sports television, Jaeger shots, and drunk regulars over harassed servers, ambient lighting, and an annoyance of microbrews. Gastropubs don’t make good second homes. Bars with grills do. 

        I worked in a bar and grill—self-designated as an “Eatery and Ale House”—for years in the capacity of both bartender and sassy waitress, and I look back on that mildly hung-over time in my life with fondness. The establishment in question, Norm’s, is still located in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. It may be that the drizzle of Seattle drives up the need for warm, amiable watering holes that feature comfort food. My old neighborhood had at least three such places. What distinguishes Norm’s—named after the owner’s golden retriever—from the other burger and beer joints is its dedication to all creatures canine. While Sunday brunch behind the bar turned me into a Bloody Mary-making automaton, Sunday brunch on the floor meant that I avoided the tangle of Flexi-leads like a jewelry thief avoids the laser-grid alarm in every hackneyed heist movie. The peerless Thursday night trivia, dimly lit red booths, quality of televisions, and stiffly poured cocktails are all selling points at Norm’s, but the dog art pinned to the walls and the fact that you can bring your Great Dane into the restaurant with you while you watch the World Cup finals is unprecedented. 

        And while bartending on weekend nights featured a distinguishable type known for their skewed ball-caps and taste for Jaeger Bombs chased by jumbo PBRs in paper bags, the rest of the week saw more subdued regulars lining the bar. The weekday shmoes— the ones who stood out as customers who crossed the friend barrier— were more interested in eating a quiet meal while bending the bartender’s ear. One such regular that easily pops into my mind is Chris Sypolt. When we moved back to Seattle for a second time, he was the first person at our house, and he bore the gift of The Macallan. It may have even been the 18-year. I don’t know now. The bottle is long gone. 

        I like to just call him “Sypolt” because although it is informal and friendly to call someone by their first name, it’s even more familiar to call someone by their last, so long as you drop the “mister.” Sypolt was reliably seated on his stool at least half my shifts, and although some evenings passed with not much more than light banter and the exchange of Visa for scotch, it was always comforting to have him there noodling around on his iPhone. His company elicited a kind of nostalgia associated with ready landmarks, although I’m not sure how he would feel if I equated his presence with that of the enormous Lenin statue that postures in all of its non-sequitur glory in front of the Fremont gelato place. 

Lenin and Gelato

Every restaurant operation is an orchestration. Sometimes it’s a small-town philharmonic, sometimes it’s a community production of “Annie,” sometimes it’s Sondheim, and sometimes it’s a bit of absurdist theater a la Beckett. In terms of the front-of-house players, at the very least you need enough bartenders and barbacks (producers) to handle the necessary flow of beverages; enough servers (actors) to manage “the weeds” because if they’re too dense, it’s guaranteed poor service; and a host (director) if customers must wait for turned tables. I would argue, too, that every neighborhood bar and grill needs its regulars as much as a symphony needs the kettle drum guy or the theatre of the absurd needs that character whose primary role is to randomly shout “Death to Napoleon!” while lying on the stage. 

        If I were to carry this metaphor a little further, I would say that although the regulars that frequent restaurants aren’t part of the crew in the strictest sense, they do function like audience plants who are a part of the production while being apart from the production. The role of “regular” is a coveted one. Though they don’t work for the restaurant, they do cross the fourth wall, and their functions are varied. For example, they act as extras on a set. Sypolt’s role as the extra would read something like “Pittsburgh Steelers fan who always wears black and gold during football season” and “guy who makes friendly wagers where losing means drinking a well-gin shot.” They also function like promoters who bring in friends and who talk at length with their outside associates about restaurant-specific anecdotes. Like the time Bradley puked on the bar during Solstice Festival. And I’m sure Sypolt has told many an acquaintance about our friend Alyona, a bartender from my era who was known for her enormous, natural breasts; taste for vodka with pickles; and prickly Russian demeanor. They ensure quality control, too. Although we’ll never let Sypolt forget that one time he lost his shit because his burger wasn’t prepared correctly, you can be sure that those line cooks were more careful with temperature and seasoning after that. And, finally, they also can assume the role of security. Though I wouldn’t have relied on Sypolt to defend the cash register, if necessary, I’m sure he would have defended my honor. At the very least he would have dialed 911 from his iPhone. 

        When I asked Sypolt about his place at Norm’s, he went round-about to offer an answer: “There is an unspoken understanding between customer and server at a bar or restaurant that goes something like ‘At the end of the night, you will be full, drunk, happy, or nauseous, or some combination of these things: just remember who helped you get there when you decide on a tip.’ The staff have to trust their efforts will not go unrewarded. Too many times they are, which starts the spiraling descent into service apathy, and the entire experience suffers. Every so often the server is having a bad day, and I will pull that person aside and try to help them see where they went wrong. I've effectively become an ad hoc quality manager to help ensure that other customers are being treated as well as I have been over the years. Part of this is enlightened self-interest. If people are treated well, they will come back, and one of my favorite places will continue to be there when I stop by.” 

        I think this is reductive, and that he doesn’t value the many roles he plays when he takes his place at the bar— eight seats down, I think— and empties buckets of cheap scotch. I will say, however, that he’s gotten more philosophical ever since he left his internet job. When I knew him— that is, saw him in-person all the time— he worked for the online company he created and then sold. Ever since I left Seattle, he’s been cultivating a keen, and successful, interest in writing. This interest was fueled by his departure from the corporate world, but also from a need to offer consolation to his best friend who died last year of cancer. 

        I asked Sypolt if Norm’s played any part in helping him compose his letters to Carla, which he assembled into an e-book called Letters to the Big C. He said that he didn’t set out to write a book. “I set out, quite simply, to try to inspire my friend, to give her things that she could hold on to late at night, when fear and anxiety were her constant companions. The book is the compilation of all of the email and text messages that I sent to her over the course of 2012, plus some ancillary stuff, including emails to friends and family that help to advance the story. With the rules of interaction, so to speak, firmly in place at Norm's, I knew that I could go in and do the things that I needed to do, and that people would understand that I wasn't really going to interact for a while. After I had all of the emails in one place, and started stitching things together into what became Letters To The Big C, Norm's was a place where I could go, be mildly social, and work through the editing and typography details. It helped that virtually everyone knew the basics of the story and they could understand me being hyper-focused on what I eventually started calling “The Thing.” And, of course, these same people were the first ones who started reading it and helped me to spread the word.” What Sypolt says only reinforces my theories about the complex role of the regular customer in the life on a restaurant. It was not merely that he went to Norm’s and an exchange of products for money occurred. A whole story emerges that belies the cold transactional nature of commerce. 

This is Norman

I may be over-thinking this as I tend to do, but no one can deny that the regular customer plays an integral role in the restaurant “show.” Necessary not just in terms of their roles as QA experts and PR reps, but also as part of the décor, flavor, and overall gestalt of the dining and drinking experience. It’s no accident that whenever we think about the show Cheers, it’s almost always Norm and Cliff that pop into our heads. Without them, the show would have been nothing. So, too, is it with a neighborhood place: without your regulars, you’re nothing but a place that serves eats and ale. I had to ask Sypolt whether he thought he was more of a Cliff or a Norm. It’s an annoying question, and he kind of shrugged me off by saying that “as amalgamations of people you meet in bars, they are probably representative of the people you see in any place that has regulars, but I'd need to sit down and think about the archetypes to try to figure out where I sit. It is, after all, a sitcom where character depth takes a back seat to funny possibilities.” But then he did admit that he has Cliff’s brain for trivia and Norm's iron-clad liver for drinking.        

        The final thing I had to ask was what he thought of me as a bartender. It’s been long enough now since I’ve slung booze, and I didn’t think I could be hurt by an answer. His response? “What you lacked in speed and execution you more than made up for in humanity. It was always a pleasure to walk in and see that you were behind the bar.” Hey, there was nothing wrong with my execution! But thanks for the humanity part.

        Eh, you’re a good egg, Sypolt. You made the experience more human, too.

Sypolt and my boy

Undead(ish)

After Nathan’s knife-twisting schemer of a wife out-maneuvered him via court settlement to hand over the better car, primary custody of their kids, the house he penned a large check for every month, and a significant chunk of his earnings as a urologist, it felt like a real kick in the pants to come to his senses shambling down Melrose as a flesh-eating zombie.
        Well this is a real, fine how-do-you-do, he thought with the better part of his brain still intact thanks in no small part to Mensa and the Friday crossword. One minute I’m in the neighbors' garage checking to see if they have any moving boxes left, the next thing I know their three-year-old gnashes a hole in my knee like some kind of rat dog. "God, what a little fucker," he grumbled as the sudden urge to consume gobs of stringy flesh grabbed him by the throat and walked him to the corner Bistro where well-heeled trophies jockeyed for sidewalk spots fully unaware that the local Viagra doctor yearned to unzip their soft bellies like Saint Laurent purses bursting with strands of gleaming entrails.
        "Hi Shirley," he exhaled a little shakily, "haven’t seen Teddy in a while."

        "Hey Doctor Nate," said Shirley, "You’re looking a little under-the-weather." 
        "Yeah, well, I think the neighbor’s preschooler turned me into a zombie," he offered with an unsure chuckle. "Plus, I've been dealing with a messy divorce." 
        "Wow, that’s adding insult to injury," she said. "Maybe Frites has something on the menu you can eat?" 
        "I guess I could check," he shrugged as he got a grip on his appetite and steadied his breathing in the perfect half-mast light of a dying Los Angeles Saturday. 
        "I hear the tartare is very good." 
        "Great," said Nate. "I guess I could get a few orders."
        "Would you like to sit? I don’t think Ted’s coming." 
        "Sure. So much for twelve solid years of veganism."

         Barely able to control his fork, Nathan tucked into the mounds of glistening raw beef made sophisticated with dijon and capers while Shirley nibbled on the little, round toasts like a bright-eyed squirrel. So much for so little to show in the end, he thought at the quaint outside table as the palm fronds waved their shadows around in the Santa Anas like frantic women vying for attention. So much for all those dicks I’ve cradled in my hands with a sympathetic wrinkle on my brow. So much for the organized office of brown leather and perfectly feathered files. So much for the wife’s little peach-fuzz mustache. For my beloved ex-Porsche in custom orange fleck, for the two-room dog house I built on weekends for my ex-beagle. 

         "So much for all of it. I’d eat it if I could. Stuff it right down my throat," he said as the bloodlust of hunger cleared a little from his eyes. He smiled with a head tilt, "Let’s toast to being undead," he said with a toss back of Vueve. Then he leaned in and bit Shirley’s ear. Too hard.

This is Not About the Apple Pan

I thought, given my trip to the Apple Pan, that I would be writing something I'll call hamburger porn, which is more drippy and muscular than your average food porn and what you might find in the pages of Esquire adjacent to a homo-eroticized torso selling cologne. I thought I would be disparaging the fussy little burgers from Umami and all the other burgers resting on beds of laurels organically grown from trend-setting gardens. I thought I would be extolling the tang of an Apple Pan burger, a tang derived from a dill relish and catsup sauce (hardly secret as sauces go). Figured I would describe how the Apple Pan’s inch-thick wedge of iceberg trumps, on any given day, the stingy helping of greens most fashionable burgers wilt on contact. Reckoned, in general, I would be focusing on how a good burger is one that knows how to make juicy what should be juicy, and how to keep dry that which should stay dry.

Then, of course, in the interest of countering myself, I figured I would have had to veer off to discuss my general problem with eating for nostalgia’s sake, which often chooses to overlook the inherent issues with a place and its food. For example, if I were to have been able to write a straightforward hamburger piece, I would have complained about the Apple Pan’s modes of delivery: The way the burger is half-wrapped in paper— with no accompanying utensils, and just the tiniest institutional napkins— means that you pretty much have to eat it all without setting it down. No savoring in that. But since I couldn’t write that, I also couldn’t complain about the perfunctory service, the stifling heat of the so-called quaint (read: un-air-conditioned) space, or the amount of trash the Apple Pan must produce given the cardboard trays that the fries and accompanying catsup are delivered on as well as the paper cone (cute or stupid?) from which I drank my Diet Coke. I simply won’t write about how the smell of an Apple Pan burger lingers for hours on your hands even after you wash them.

Nope. I can’t write any of that. Instead I have to write a human interest piece. Why? because I forgot that the Apple Pan is cash only, which is one more way that old-fashioned gives way to frustration. Luckily for the cash-poor diner there is a Bank of America right next door. Oh, but wait… I had forgotten my ATM card in my parenting backpack and I was carrying, instead, my teaching backpack. The morning had been frantic, with my son wailing about having to go to preschool and with me hustling to get a lesson plan together for my composition class, which I taught prior to burgertime. Not to mention that I had a lot on my mind: the reality that my son needs to be assessed for learning disabilities, for example, or the never-ending to-do list for our new home, or the large stack of papers that needed to be graded over the weekend. Why wasn’t I carrying cash? Because I wasn’t, so lay off. How could I stick my ATM card into the parenting backpack without replacing it in my wallet? Because my mind was trying to hold on to a million thoughts at once, so I can’t really write about the white, wrap-around counter, which is the only seating, or the metal behemoth of a cash register, which must be a relic from the Apple Pan’s founding in 1947. 

Above all, I have to write about Deke, a gentleman dressed in casual pinstriped broadcloth and khaki who sat down next to me and proceeded to tuck into his newspaper in a way that said closed for conversation. Of course, I felt bad interrupting his lunchtime reading with the question, meekly asked, Is the Apple Pan cash only? Yet I had to ask as a glimmer of memory made me panic three bites in to the burger (with all the snap and juice of lettuce and beef, the Tillamook added a smooth creaminess to the composition) I really can’t write about. His reply was something like, “I don’t know, but don’t worry about it. Enjoy your food first and talk to the man later.” I’m sure he saw the sheer dread in my eyes as I pawed through my backpack looking for my ATM card. I nervously dipped my golden, medium cut fries in the huge mound of Heinz hastily poured for me by the server as I imagined myself wearing a paper hat and peeling potatoes in the back while the rest of the restaurant workers made fun of me in Spanish. Gringa estúpida no tiene dinero.

When my check was delivered, so was Deke’s. He settled my tab as well with no prompting. Just a shrug and I’ll get this one, too to the man behind the counter. Deke must have had a good nose for desperation, which, I’m sure, was fairly leaking from my pores. We chatted then about USC and writing and real estate. I had a stack of student papers in front of me that I was trying to read and keep free of catsup smears. The point is, I can’t write about a burger joint, not when the number of texts devoted to hamburger porn grossly outnumber the burgers worth lusting for. Moreover, I especially can’t dedicate the words of this essay to the task of deconstructing the Apple Pan eating experience when what is really important is that a man I didn’t even know bought me lunch because I showed up at a cash-only restaurant with no cash. There are burgers and kindness out there that defy expectations. Thanks, Deke. I’ll do what I can to pay the karma forward.