I don’t care whether they agree with me or not, so long as they don’t take disagreement as a personal affront, and are interested in talking about it.
Author: Jinx
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We had a house-guest for the film festival, Jon, a tall, tall man, a chemist, with pale gray, amost white hair, and wire-rimmed glasses. He’s a member of a film club Michael helps moderate in San Jose, and he slept on our couch in between trekking off to the Kabuki or Castro to watch films.
Jon lives out in the countryside near Palo Alto in a communal complex where meals are taken in a large house close to the road. His own house there was purchased for a dollar, sawn in half, and moved to the commune by truck, carried slowly down the road in the dead of night. When they got it to its lot, they discovered the two halves no longer quite fit together, and they had to use a jack to make the house whole again. Jon showed us the seam in his wall once when we were there for dinner.
As soon as he arrived, he and Michael took off for the festival. We all agreed to meet at the Kabuki at 11:30 pm, and so late that night, after fortifying myself with a cup of cafe au lait, I dressed in my standard party costume (black jeans and black sweater) and walked to Japantown.
Youth lingered, though I did not consider myself young back then. These days I cannot imagine agreeing to begin a night out at 11:30 PM.
Jon still lives in his uneven house at his little communal community and still sleeps on our couch during the film festival. We are such fast friends now that we spent last Thanksgiving weekend together, the three of us renting an air b&b in Nevada City and spending three happy days walking, hiking, drinking wine and playing dominoes.
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Daily writing promptTell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.
I bought them in 1996 because I was planning to travel to Europe with my new boyfriend, Michael. They were comfortable, durable, ugly and waterproof. I had seen a TV ad for shoes like them that showed a pair being walked through rain and puddles, the unseen owner pausing in inch-deep water before a larger pair of brogans to rise briefly on tip-toe — apparently to kiss the other owner. This appealed to me tremendously.
And so I wore them and walked in them with Michael across London, Paris, and Antwerp. They proved themselves in Antwerp, when, late on the night of October 31st, we walked arm in arm beneath an umbrella through a downpour, Michael grinning and weaving slightly from the Belgian beer he’d enjoyed as we edged around and through crowds of students out celebrating Halloween. When we got back to the hotel we had to peel off our wet clothes and run ourselves a hot bath, but my feet, at least, were still dry and warm.
For years, they lasted, at last failing on a wet day in San Francisco when I felt rain trickling in and soaking my socks. Unwilling to give them up, I carried them to a cobbler on Polk Street, who did his best. Unfortunately, after he was done they no longer fit as well. I finally gave up on them after an anti-war march left me with a very sore, bruised, big toe.
Still, I did not throw them out. They are stored in my closet, and I toy with the idea of finding another cobbler who might be able to fix them. There’s always hope.
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We finished the issue today. The last days are in some ways the worst. There are always a thousand piddling things wrong that have to be fixed. I correct and run out one page and it comes back smeared with red and I have to do it again. Everyone was on edge. Faren silent, Trevin snappish, Shelly exasperated because Charlie was giving contradictory orders. But, we got it out. Tomorrow, Charlie can leave for wherever he is going a comparatively happy man.
New neighbors have moved in downstairs. Earlier this evening there was a lot of scraping and bumping, loud music, and voices echoing up the stairwell. The phone downstairs is hooked up now (I bumped into the phone man yesterday coming out of our apartment) and they’ve gotten about three calls so far.
At one point this evening one of them, the blonde one with glasses, rang the doorbell and asked me to move the car so they could get the furniture in. Across the street were at least two pick-up trucks loaded with furniture, and three men talking to each other in Spanish. Lucius was upset. He kept crowding by the door at the foot of the stairs, meowing and hurrying up to me as if he expected me to do something about it.
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This question prompted me to look around the room, try to decide. There’s the small, light pillow a friend gave me, which was made, he explained, for throwing at cats when they are misbehaving. That friend is long dead now, a casualty of the AIDS epidemic, but I still use the pillow occasionally on my current cat.
There’s also the fingernail-sized scrap of rosy nacre the ocean tossed at my feet on some beach decades ago, my grandmother’s engagement ring, still stored away and waiting for an assessment, my own engagement ring, the gold necklace my father gave me…
But after reading this prompt I got up from my desk and searched at length for a small glass perfume bottle, because I could not, at first, remember exactly where it was, and that made me a little anxious. After some effort, I found it.
A lover gave the bottle to me many, many years ago. It was a slightly uncharacteristic gift from him — more romantic than usual. He presented it to me in the small box that came with it, upholstered in pink with an Asian pattern, and I could swear he said at the same time, “this is not an engagement ring.” (That wasn’t necessary. The box was plainly too big for a ring.)
Whatever he actually said, I remember him seeming slightly anxious, as though it were important to him that I like it. And that, too, was uncharacteristic.
I suspect he got it in Japantown. The bottle is pale, frosted glass, oval, just big enough to fit in the palm of my hand. There is a picture on it of a couple, a strong, samuraish man leading a horse and smiling at a woman who looks down demurely.
“It’s very old,” he said. “It’s very valuable.”
We were together for twelve years. We split up over thirty years ago. He’s been gone now for twenty years, died young, and quite suddenly, of an undiagnosed medical condition that could easily have been dealt with if he’d known about it. I was happily married to someone else by then.
The day an old friend phoned to give me the news I lay down and cried a little, not because my grief was little, but because it felt mostly buried, like something moving around deep inside me, rearranging things.
After he gave me that bottle I hugged him and assured him, truthfully, that, yes, I did like the gift, very much. I still do. He gave it to me.
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No custard danish this morning. “We sold the last ones half an hour ago,” the boy behind the counter told me when I went in shockingly late, at about 7:00 am. So instead I picked up a couple of raspberry tarts, not tarts as I know them but more like shallow, not too sweet muffins studded with fruit. Another delicious thing we probably won’t be able to get in San Francisco.
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I entered the Botanic Gardens through a wrought iron gate. Curving paved paths, trees and shrubs with labels on them, lots of shade. There was a lovely pond with ducks that had pointed rather than blunt beaks. Every now and then I’d hear another bird. I’m not sure what it was, whether it was the Ibis or one of the black and white crows, but it sounded like something between the mew of a siamese cat and the noise a toddler makes as it spits out something that tastes bad. Nearby were signs warning me not to feed the birds because they might get aggressive, which, considering the beaks on the Ibis, stalking moodily around in the grass, seemed like good advice.
I heard a faint chittering sound above me as was walking through an especially tropical looking area, very shady, lots of palms. When I looked up I saw what at first I thought were large brown leather bags hanging in the trees high over my head. Then one of the brown bags stretched its wings. The trees were festooned with bats, very large, beautiful bats, their fur thick and reddish where a dapple of sun hit them. I watched one fly between the trees, soaring overhead, less like the flapping of a bat than a small, sleek animal caught in mid-leap.
As fascinated as I was, it seemed unwise to be just standing beneath all these creatures so I began walking again, slowly because I kept looking up at that shady conclave up in the treetops. They were bedding down for the day. There were always a few who were restless, nudging each other, stretching their wings, or sailing from one tree to another, and there were so many. It took me about a minute to get out from under them.
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Cooking at home.
Lying awake at night, worrying. -
The city is as gray and still as it was yesterday, Sutro and the Golden Gate invisible. It’s like being on a becalmed ship surrounded by fog.
We brought in take-out last night. I would have preferred delivery, but Michael insisted on going out for it, and I find it hard to blame him for wanting to get outside, walk, see something other than the walls of this apartment.
We would have liked something from Pancho’s, our usual Mexican joint, but it is closed today for some reason. We settled for a newer place, also Mexican, just north of California Street.
I hope we don’t lose Pancho’s. It’s a small, brightly lit place, with just a few tables and walls covered with vintage Mexican movie and bullfighting posters.
One bit of art in particular sticks with me, something I typically have contemplated while waiting for our order to be bagged: A framed woodcut showing a bearded, well-dressed man with a black bag walking down a country path, one arm raised, eyes wide, his mouth a black O of horror as he’s confronted by a grinning skeleton in a serape and sombrero. The actual Spanish wording of the caption is lost to me now, but it translates to “The doctor surprised.” I suspect the woodcut dates back to the 1918 flu pandemic.
Yes, we lost Pancho’s.
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I thought of patriotism as the kind of tribalism I encountered when I was young — people not only waving flags, standing for the national anthem and putting their hands on their hearts, but harassing and threatening anyone who didn’t. The mistreatment of immigrants and minorities, the blacklisting & ostracism of Communists or suspected Communists, the “patriotic” thugs I saw on TV as a child, beating up demonstrators, etc. etc.
It was the twenty-first century that first made me realize how deeply I love my country and care about it and its institutions.
First came 2000, and the shock of watching the Supreme Court appoint a president.
Then, almost on the heels of that, came September 11, 2001. It wasn’t just the carnage in New York City and DC that day, but the nightmarish aftermath, when the entire country seemed to have lost its mind. Attorney-client privilege, habeas corpus, the First Amendment were suddenly not hard and fast rules, but debatable. People in suits sat on Sunday morning talk shows, often opening with “I’m a liberal but…” then talking about torture and indefinite detention as things upon which moral and rational Americans could disagree.
And finally, came January 6, 2021, and the sight of a mob breaking into our Capitol, smashing windows and doors, smearing the walls with filth, threatening to kill people for daring to transfer power peacefully.
I love my country through and through, with my heart and with my mind. First, I love this country as most of us love our homes and family — its physical beauty, its foods, its accents, its folklore, music, literature, films…
But I also love its ideals, no matter how imperfectly they have been followed in the past.
I don’t care about whether or not the flag touches the ground or is folded properly. I don’t care if the person next to me isn’t reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
I care that the person next to me, even if I despise that person’s views, is free to voice their opinions, worship or not worship as they choose, run for office if qualified, vote if qualified, without fear of being destroyed for doing it. I care that our system of peacefully transferring power from one leader to another, one political party to another, remains intact.
And as I look at the upcoming election, I care about whether or not the man who already tried once to overturn our institutions and seize power does it again.
People like that — Hitler and Pinochet come to mind — often have a dress rehearsal before actually succeeding.
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Shel’s party was on Saturday night. Shel has moved to New York and is now living in the East Village, but his landlord doesn’t know that. Mark is living in his place now, and Shel had returned to pack a few more boxes before driving back to New York. I’m sure Shel felt odd that night, as one always does when you return to an old home.
Shel’s a thin, dark, rather good-looking man in his late thirties, always a bit tense and watchful, fond of Frank Sinatra and martinis. The apartment is on Russian Hill. Technically, I suppose, it’s a single bedroom, though it consits mainly of a long hall with a kitchen at one end, a medium sized room at the other, and a bathroom and large closet in between. It’s a standard San Francisco apartment with hardwood floors, high ceilings, and anachronisms like a phone nook and an ironing closet. The room at the end of the hall has a futon where I suppose Shel once slept and Mark now sleeps. The little kitchen, with a tiny four-burner range cowering behind the refrigerator, has a shelf of cookbooks now, and spices and bottles of exotic liquors, where before it had mainly breakfast cereal and martini fixings.
It was a mix of Mark and Shel’s friends, which meant a lot of filmmakers and people from the magazine where Mark works. Bluff, talkative family men, skinny women writers, a Korean girl I’d talked to at Shel’s going-away party in January, Karla and Larry, a British couple, both of them working class vegetarians and leftists, Milford and Donna, a couple we had frequently encountered at Mark’s dinner parties. Mark, energetic and serious, danced with a tall, laughing woman in the parlor. Milford talked in the kitchen, Donna sitting nearby. Michael drank wine and grew very redfaced and hilarious. After my own glass of wine, I sat on Michael’s lap, no longer hearing most of what was being said and wondering, after looking around later, where Donna had disappeared to. Milford was still holding court beside the refrigerator, emphatic, almost belligerent.
Finally, after almost everyone else had gone home, we got up to leave, but on our way out Michael got snagged on Shel, who was standing near the door, and I was stranded out in the hall for fifteen minutes before giving up and coming back in. Found Donna sleeping peacefully on the parlor futon while Mark and his lady continued their dance a few feet away.
I have changed the names to protect the innocent. I’ll only say that “Mark” had a food column and “Shel” is a fairly well-known indie filmmaker, still living in New York, still slender and good-looking but gray, with a wife and a teenage daughter. The other partiers are still part of the San Francisco film community and occasionally their faces, altered by time, resurface in our lives in indie features and docs. “OMG! That guy being interviewed is LARRY! “
Pam Troy 