matt

I went steady with a boy the last two years of high school. We were each other’s first serious relationship, first love, first everything. He dumped me without explanation the weekend after the Super Bowl in our senior year. I have no idea why. And it doesn’t matter, because this installation of memory motel isn’t about him. It’s about the boy who came and got me after that. His name was Matt.

So I am going steady with Boyfriend and we smugly hang out with three other “married” couples for two solid years. All the girls sport their boyfriend’s class rings or little dorky diamond chips called “promise” rings and we all hang out at our table in the cafeteria during lunch and between classes and party together on the weekends. It’s all so ridiculous now, isn’t it? But at the time, it made sense.

Boyfriend played the trumpet and sat first chair in the band and also played in a pretty good stage band. He drove a bottle-green Triumph Spitfire convertible and every morning he picked me up for school.

Then one morning he didn’t show up. I called his house, no answer. I got my mom to drop me off at school on her way to work. There was Boyfriend’s car in the parking lot. But he wasn’t in his usual spot at our table in the cafeteria where everyone hung out before first period. I found him in his empty first period classroom. He was sitting alone, pensive, waiting. When I asked him why he hadn’t picked me up he was silent and avoided eye contact. He was shunning me, kind of a teenage Amish strategy, I guess. It was pretty gutless. I was stunned.

I found out a few days later that he was running around with a girl who was a cashier at the supermarket where he had gotten an after-school job bagging groceries. The really shitty thing about it was that she lived one block away from me, so when I went to and from school, I would often see the Spitfire parked in her driveway.

I was miserable. And here I was, half my senior year to go and I had no one to go to the prom with or any of those other senior events. It was tragic. I coped by hacking off chunks of my hair in the bathroom, losing a lot of weight and sleeping all the time. Looking back on it, I think I was probably clinically depressed, but my parents thought taking me shopping a lot and sending me to visit my grandparents in Ft. Myers for the weekends would do the trick to cheer me up. I did learn to make Rob Roys and Manhattans and granddad did teach me to chip and putt (their house sat on the ninth hole of the Whisky Creek golf course), and I did come to appreciate the therapeutic value of golfing with a bunch of old guys, but I was still a mess.

One Friday night some of my girlfriends dragged me to a keg party out on the point. It was March and close to my birthday and they insisted I needed to be aired out and so I went. The keg parties always consisted of a bonfire on the beach (totally illegal then and now, I suppose) and a lot of car stereos booming and a keg in the back of someone’s pick-up truck and kids standing around in knots of boisterous conversation and idiotic adolescent behavior.

We all stood around and daintily sipped beer from big plastic cups and watched the guys do beer shots through a funnel attached to a hose. I remember standing in a circle with my girlfriends listening to them chatter about their dresses for the prom. I looked at the sky and mostly tuned them out, then I noticed all the chatter had stopped. When I looked around, I saw that our circle had been breached. There stood Matt and he was looking at me expectantly.

“So, are you ready to go?” He asked, conspiritorially, as if continuing an interrupted conversation.

I looked behind me, certain he wasn’t addressing me. I had never exchanged a word with this guy. But he took a step into the circle and held out his hand.

“Come on,” he said quietly.

I have no idea why I did it, but I took his hand and walked out of the circle to the astonishment of my girlfriends. They all gasped and sputtered protests, things like “What the hell?” “Are you high? What are you doing?!?” But I walked with Matt across the field and to his car and when he held the passenger door open for me I got in without hesitation.

Matt was our school’s melancholy, dark brooder. I suppose every school has one. Matt was really good at it. He had a mass of curly brown hair the color of cocoa powder and he had dark brown eyes. He was a big guy and very broad-shouldered. He played on the football team for three years but quit the team our senior year. He did not hang out with any guys but he dated a girl named Ginger for about a year. I had a class with her when I was in 11th grade and he would hang out with her outside the door until the last bell rang and I remember noticing him leaning into her, talking very quietly, murmuring. I never saw them touch but they always seemed so intimate that they didn’t need to touch. She was a year older than we were and after she graduated, I never saw Matt with anyone again.

Matt eyed me wordlessly then light up a cigarette. He reached down and picked up an eight-track tape off the floor of his Datsun and shoved the tape into the player attached to a rack under the dashboard. It was Bob Dylan singing “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” I’d never listened to Dylan before, but Matt listened to no one else at the time. We sat in the car for a few minutes, silently, he looking at me very studiously, as if he were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I concentrated on the words: “Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?”

We drove out to the highway that runs along the beach and drove for about an hour in silence. I felt very comfortable with him and though I had no idea what he was up to, it didn’t matter to me. I trusted him in a way I had never trusted anyone before. And then he took me home. He knew where I lived which didn’t seem strange to me and I turned to him and said “thanks” as I got out of the car and that was it.

My girlfriends were beside themselves about this development and they demanded to know what had happened, what he wanted, where we had gone. I told them nothing. Even ex-Boyfriend became alarmed. He appeared next to my locker one morning and asked me what I was doing with Matt; did I even know what I was doing? I coldly told him it was none of his fucking business and walked away. What a thrill that was.

One night, a week after Matt rescued me from the keg party, he knocked on my bedroom window at 1:00 a.m. I opened it wide and popped the screen out and he crawled clumsily through and landed on my bed then flopped on the floor. He pulled a tape out of his pocket and asked me to play it. I stretched out on my bed and he sprawled on the floor and we listened to “Shelter from the Storm” from Blood on the Tracks:

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Matt fell asleep on my floor and I woke him the next morning after my parents had left for church. We went out for breakfast and drank pots and pots of coffee while he scribbled notes in his notebook.

Matt and I became companions. It was the first adult relationship I ever had. We spent hours together not talking because there wasn’t a need to. We were comfortable being in the same room and there was no need for constant interaction. We spent a lot of time at his house, a beautiful home that he shared with his elegant, detached mom and his yellow lab, Sonny. He slowly told me about himself, things no one at school knew about him. Matt’s dad had been a pilot in the Air Force and he had been shot down in Vietnam. Matt’s mom never remarried. She spent a lot of time volunteering at the art museum in town and taking painting classes and wasn’t home very much. The house had a vacant feel to it and I know Matt liked my company for this reason. We never talked about Ginger, but I think she broke his heart somehow, though he did keep her picture on the bookshelf in his bedroom. I never asked and he never brought it up.

He was into the Beat poets, especially Ginsburg and he loved Woody Guthrie but he was on a Dylan bender at the time and so we listened to Dylan constantly.

I dropped out of everything at school and only attended enough classes to actually graduate. It was a huge relief, really, to be free of the social activities and all the traditional bullshit and the expectations that went along with it. I felt like all that was a million years behind me already. My parents were freaked out, but I was 18 and about to leave home anyway, so they threw their hands up and let me go.

On the morning of graduation, we woke up in the bottom bed of his bunk bed, Sonny draped across our feet, and realized the ceremony started in a half hour. We made it in time, but my parents were horrified and embarrassed (though my grandparents were intrigued and amused). My girlfriends glared hatefully at Matt and looked at me like I was mentally ill. It was the last time I ever saw most of them.

Matt’s mom rented a cottage on the beach for him for three months as a graduation gift. He and I skipped the prom and hung out at the cottage, drinking beer and eating crab legs and hush puppies. He had a huge round raft that he tied a concrete block to and most days that summer we would fill the raft with beer and drag it out into the water, drop anchor and drift and drink and smoke and sing and laugh for hours.

As fall approached and I prepared to leave for college, Matt grew quieter. I tried to tell him how grateful I was that he had seen through me and saw something more than a cheerleader, a stupid, spoiled superficial girl whose boyfriend had dumped her and made her a high school pariah, a self-absorbed drama queen. He had freed me and saved me all at the same time and I loved him for that. He didn’t want to talk about it.

He called me one night from a phone booth on the corner by the beach cottage. I could hear the rain hitting the glass partitions of the booth. He said he wanted to play a song for me and then he held the receiver to the tape player and I heard Dylan singing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on
Don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right

It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain't no use in callin' out my name, gal
I can't hear you any more
I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

Then he hung up the phone. I listened to the dial tone for a while before I hung up. I never heard from him again.

we have to stop meeting like this...

most of the community theatres in my, er, for lack of a better word-- community--have in recent years tumbled down the slippery slope into embracing what is the most ill-advised of traditions in my opinion: allowing the audience to meet the actors in the lobby after the show.

Or maybe, I should say, subjecting the actors to having to submit to the glad-handing and mostly inane, tedious BS of the post-performance meet-and-greet.

One of the local theatres started this a few years ago when they did a show that drew a lot of families with kids, who, of course, clamored to meet the characters after the performance. Then it spread like a loathsome sickness through the other theatres in this area. Now regular local theatre-goers expect it and some even get snippy if actors fail to appear in the lobby after a show.

I do not go to the lobby after a show. I beat a fast retreat to the dressing room as soon as the curtain call ends and begin the process of becoming me again. I like drifting out of the stage door and walking to my car unnoticed, blending in with the folks in the parking lot. I have been directed by directors to troop to the lobby with the rest of the dutiful cast and be a good girl. It is the one direction I ignore. And that's okay, because in my book it is not a stage direction. If a friend or family member is in the house, they know where to find me. I don't believe I owe the audience anything beyond the performance they paid for.

My thespian friend, Bob, also hates what he calls the "'Joyed-It Line," this awkward reception line that forms with the actors lined up firing-squad style, smiling stiffly as the patrons shuffle by on their way to the parking lot, restroom or to the box office to turn in their hearing assistance head-sets. Some herd past the actors, ignoring them in their rush to get to their cars and out of the parking lot ahead of the crowd. Some do move down the line, shaking hands with the cast, mumbling, "'joyed it, 'joyed it, 'joyed it." It is as if we are there, hats in hand, asking for kudos and pats on the head and it is so pathetic. And it is agony. And sometimes downright humiliating.

Last night I filled in as lobby manager for a theatre that is producing a large musical. One of the women in the show is a relatively new performer, but quite talented and eager to please. And a damn good tap dancer, I hasten to add. But last night, some idiot, thinking herself, I suppose, to be witty in some ignorant, clueless way, commented to the performer in the 'joyed-it line, "my, you move well for a fat girl!" Well that was nice, wasn't it? I ended up rushing through the lobby to the back of the theatre to comfort this sweet young woman, who sang and danced her heart out for two hours on center stage but was now huddled in the darkness of the backstage bathroom, sobbing. What the hell is wrong with people? And why do we put ourselves through this? I know it will take some doing to get this wounded spirit back onstage tonight. I know she will be ready when the curtain goes up. But still.

Beyond applause, I don't care for audience feedback. I give a shit not what they think of my costume, hairstyle or performance. I don't give a shit if I remind them of their daughter, cousin, ex-wife or sister. I don't care to hear that they saw the same show on Broadway, but this production was just as good. If they had a good time, great, I am glad. But there should not be contact between cast and audience. That line should not be crossed. It ends the magic that is theatre. It makes the imaginary and fanciful suddenly real. That is not what we pay our money and eagerly sit in the darkness for. I have never attended a professional theatrical performance anywhere that allowed me to greet the performers in the lobby after the show. There is a reason for that.

cranes

One final thing re: last week in New York and 9/11 and then I will climb down off the soapbox and shut up about it already:

the cranes are still around.

One the first anniversary of 9/11, Grace and I wandered around the city, agog at all the firefighters and law enforcement officers who had flooded into New York to mark the milestone. We moved through the crowds, notebooks in hand, interviewing and photographing these men who called one another "brother."

There was a pack of hale and hearty firemen from Daytona Beach who had ridden their Harleys to be there. There were police officers from Indiana, Seattle, Texas, Hawaii and all over the world, a convergence that was broad and sweeping and intimate and familial all at the same time.

But what got me in the gut, what finally loosed all the emotions I had clamped down for months and months were the cranes.

The morning of 9/11/2002, a group pf Japanese firefighters appeared in front of the makeshift shrine to the fallen firefighters that had been erected near Battery Park. Each of the men held long strands of brilliantly colored paper cranes. They stood silently for a bit and then they lit incense and knelt, and a hush vibrated through the crowd. The men chanted and prayed and then they were quiet. Grace and I inched closer to watch. After a time, one by one, each man rose and approached the shrine and tenderly spread the cranes across the marble steps, then bowed. Then the group silently melted back into the crowd.

The following year, I was sad to see that the shrine had been cleared. I have often wondered what became of all the momentos, photos, prayers, love letters, candles, flowers, helmuts, badges and patches left in agony, in grief, in remembrance. I wondered the most about all the cranes.

Last week I got my answer. St. Pauls has intalled a commemorative exhibit in the sancutary of the church. There are displays there that are representative of the tons of items that were left behind by mourners following 9/11.

As I walked through the sanctuary last week, I was flooded with memories and emotions, but it was the sight of the cranes at the end of the room that made me let go of my breath and pause. Affixed to the carefully displayed cranes is a plaque that reads in part that the peace cranes were made by schoolchildren and survivors of World War II, sent from Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. The cranes symbolize peace and compassion and reconcilitation, the plaque said.

lunch with the dead at st. paul's

I'm not much of a church girl.

But I was when I was growing up. My mom was raised Presbyterian and my dad was Catholic so when they married in a civil ceremony in the 1950s, both their families freaked out. It was today's equivalent of a devout Muslim marrying a Pentecostal Christian. The two just could not have seemed further apart at the time, according to thinking of the day, at least among my relatives. The happy medium my parents struck was to raise my brother and I in the Episcopal church. My brother was an acolyte and I always sang in the choir. The parishioners at our church became an extended family and it was all comforting in its unchanging familiarity.

Later, when I became an adult and aware of the politics in the church I attended, I grew more uncomfortable and wary of the self-righteous and the smug smiles of the pious. When my favorite priest, a wonderful, warm and incredibly witty scholar of ancient texts was abruptly ousted from my parish because he was unmarried and rumored to be gay, I left the church in disgust, never to return.

But in the months following 9/11, I spent a great deal of time at the church pictured here. St. Paul's stands at the foot of what was once the Twin Towers. It stood witness to the rise of Manhattan around it, to the Revolutionary war, to slave trading, to the Civil War and the Great Depression. And on 9/11, its walls shook and its grounds were showered with debris and wreckage, but still, by some miracle, it stood as it has since 1766.

Many people have sought and found refuge at St. Paul's and I imagine many will for years hence, at least, I hope so. I know I have.

On the morning following the fourth anniversary of 9/11, a little over a week ago, I sat and ate my lunch in the graveyard. The headstones that mark some of the graves are perfectly smooth, names and dates washed away by centuries of rain and snow and pollution and time. They sigh and lean on one another. I wonder what the dead must think about all they have witnessed here in this tiny garden where time in a way has stood still. I wonder if they mind me eating my lunch here. I don' think that they do.

9/11/2005

the hardest part about the day for me was controlling my hostility toward the tourists.

I sat and watched load after load of eager tourists disgourged from double-decker tour buses, digital cameras in hand, jostling to get a good shot of the site of the World Trade Center.

They actually stand in front of the construction site, arms thrown around one another and grin for the camera. As if this were the fucking Grand Canyon. How can this be? Why is this a tourist destination for these sheep from Cincinnati and Orlando? I am appalled.

"But what about you?" A voice whispers in my head. "Why are you somehow the exception? Aren't you here for the same reason? You don't live here either, you're an outsider, a gawker."

I tell myself, no, I am here for other reasons. Not just to snap a few pictures then slink around the corner to Century 21 to do some discount shopping. Not to linger over the vendor's card tables of Twin Towers t-shirts and snowglobes. I come back every year to remember. Because I was part of the recovery effort. Because I was here when the fires were still burning and teddy bears were left on street corners with photos of the missing. Everyone really believed we were all in this together and we still thought someone could have possibly lived through it and was waiting to be found and so there was hope.

These days I'm not so sure of anything I was certain of four years ago

sunset in Queens

My flight to NYC on 9/10 was fast which was great because the plane was packed and of course the screaming baby karma kicked in yet again--right behind me like clockwork. And the poor kid screamed in my ear for two fun-filled hours.

My Walkman only cranks so high, so in between tracks of Dave Matthews, I did hear some ear-piercing whines, but it wasn't too bad. Although I did panic at one point when the batteries crapped out on me and I feverishly pawed through my backpack like a crazed pit bull unearthing a spare rib to find my camera and yank the batteries out of it and slap them into the Walkman. Yes, I am the only dork left who does not own an ipod.

I was at Grace's long enough to dump my stuff and make the mandatory call home to announce that I lived through the flight and cab ride. Then I dashed off to the subway because I had a rendevous with Tracy in Times Square. I watched the sunset as I waited for the 7 train. Here's what it looked like.

distant drums

I live about three miles from a high school but the water carries sound quite well at night and the past two Friday nights I have been able to hear the steady, muffled beat of the marching band’s bass drum. Football season has begun and I hear echoes of sounds that are faint and far away but I can make them out-- the thumping of the percussion section and the high shrill wave of hundreds of excited voices going up at once. Those sounds transport me.

My first real official date in high school was to the homecoming dance when I was in 10th grade. My date’s name was Dave, and he was a big, lumbering football player. Dave was like a tank on the football field and everyone’s hero, not because he was especially handsome but because he was charming and he had miles and miles of heart and it showed. He attacked the field like it was a matter of life or death and he protected his teammates like a madman. And he laughed all the time and smiled easily.

I didn’t know Dave very well and so when he asked me to the dance it totally took me by surprise. I had never been asked out before and that was mostly because I had an overly protective older brother who scared the shit out of most of the boys who even acted like they might be interested in me. My brother approved of Dave.

After that it became apparent to me that Dave really liked me. I was in the marching band and at the end of the games, as the players would trudge off the field toward the athletic building, the band would be coming off the track and though separated by a chain link fence, Dave would sometimes walk along next to me, swinging his helmet and shoulder pads, and ask me what I thought of the game. Sometimes he would park his car by the field on afternoons when the band practiced and he would watch.

Looking back on it, I can’t believe my mom let me go out with this guy. He was a year older, over six-feet tall, and drove a car. I was 15 and had never been on a date or alone with a boy. But it was homecoming and my brother liked him, so maybe she figured it was okay. And it was, but I was so self-conscious and nervous I became paralyzed by the unease I felt being alone in his car with him. I remember gripping the arm rest on the door like death because my hand shook from nerves and I didn’t want him to notice. Dave had sent me a mum corsage the size of a cabbage and it had a little gold football charm in the center of it. It nudged my chin whenever I looked down. Peter Frampton was playing on the radio.

The dance was at the Dolphin Resort out on the beach (it’s still standing) and the theme that year was “Stairway to Heaven.” Everyone had to climb a spiral staircase to get to the ballroom on the second floor and I remember all kinds of stars had been hung from the ceiling and some of the football players were leaning over the railing, hooting and hollering at everyone as they arrived. They greeted Dave with particular gusto which made me even more nervous. I was so relieved to see some of my friends there that night that I sort of attached myself to them and spent little time with Dave, which pissed him off, but I didn’t know this until many years later.

I dated Dave a few more times after that but I could never get totally comfortable with him. And he was a terrible kisser. When he left for college my senior year, we saw each other sometimes when he was home on breaks, but it was never serious, plus I had a steady boyfriend at that point.

Dave surprised everyone when he suddenly married a girl he met at college. I didn’t see him again for 20 years. One day I sat in the corner of a packed conference room, furiously taking notes at a huge local government planning meeting and heard a voice on the other side of the room that was unmistakable. I looked up and searched the room for the voice. He had a beard and a little less hair, but, yes, it was Dave! He looked at me and grinned, then continued with his presentation.

We hung around after the meeting and talked for what seemed like hours. He had been married for 20+ years, had two kids and finally blurted out that he was pretty much miserable. He nodded and smiled when I caught him up on the details of my life. We kept in touch. We chatted and e-mailed and had lunch here and there for a few years. He was always up on the latest info on people we went to high school with and he loved to call me up and tell me who was in town, whose mom had just died, who was throwing a party.

Then he called me up one day and told me he had moved out, he was getting divorced. I met him a few times for lunch and listened and nodded. It occurred to me that I was completely comfortable with him and loved spending time with him. There’s something about being with someone who knew you when you were a kid and still sees you in that same soft, hazy light of wistful memories that is so powerful and potent. I treasured my friendship with Dave. But I wasn’t available beyond that and he never crossed the line. It was understood.

I talked to Dave yesterday for the first time in about six months. He is getting married in November. He apologized about not being in touch lately and for not inviting me to the wedding, but his wife-to-be would not appreciate a former girlfriend at the ceremony, which I totally understand (though I never really considered myself his “girlfriend” and I never slept with him, ever). I’m happy for Dave. I congratulated him and wished him well and I meant it. As I hung up the phone, I thought: " I’ll probably never hear from him again and that’s okay, that’s life, I get it."

But tonight after I parked the car and walked up the driveway toward the house, there was that sound again, that faint distant pounding. The faded trill of a ref’s whistle cut through the night air and I stopped for a moment to listen. And a wave of sadness swept over me so sharp and complete, the feeling of loss so unexpected, so bitter, that it really kicked me in the ass.

...and that's all I have to say about that. (why I love Tim)

"Those Looters Should be Shot, Praise the Lord, and Pass the Guacamole!"
A God with Whom I am not Familiar
By TIM WISE

This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, with the Brooks Brothers shirt: You don't know me. But I know you. I watched you as you held hands with your tablemates at the restaurant where we both ate this afternoon. I listened as you prayed, and thanked God for the food you were about to eat, and for your own safety, several hundred miles away from the unfolding catastrophe in New Orleans.

You blessed your chimichanga in the name of Jesus Christ, and then proceeded to spend the better part of your meal--and mine, since I was too near your table to avoid hearing every word--morally scolding the people of that devastated city, heaping scorn on them for not heeding the warnings to leave before disaster struck. Then you attacked them--all of them, without distinction it seemed--for the behavior of a relative handful: those who have looted items like guns, or big screen TVs. I heard you ask, amid the din of your colleagues "Amens," why it was that instead of pitching in to help their fellow Americans, the people of New Orleans instead--again, all of them in your mind--chose to steal and shoot at relief helicopters.

I watched you wipe salsa from the corners of your mouth, as you nodded agreement to the statement of one of your friends, sitting to your right, her hair neatly coiffed, her makeup flawless, her jewelry sparkling. When you asked, rhetorically, why it was that people were so much more decent amid the tragedy of 9-11, as compared to the aftermath of Katrina, she had offered her response, but only after apologizing for what she admitted was going to sound harsh. "Well," Buffy explained. "It's probably because in New Orleans, it seems to be mostly poor people, and you know, they just don't have the same regard." She then added that police should shoot the looters, and should have done so from the beginning, so as to send a message to the rest that theft would not be tolerated. You, who had just thanked Jesus for your chips and guacamole, said you agreed. They should be shot. Praise the Lord. Your God is one with whom I am not familiar.

Two thoughts.

First, it is a very fortunate thing for you, and likely for me, that my two young children were with me as I sat there, choking back fish tacos and my own seething rage, listening to you pontificate about shit you know nothing about. Have you ever even been to New Orleans? And no, by that I don't mean the New Orleans of your company's sales conference. I don't mean Emeril's New Orleans, or the New Orleans of Uptown Mardi Gras parties. I mean the New Orleans that is buried as if it were Atlantis, in places like the lower 9th ward: 98 percent black, 40 percent poor, where bodies are floating down the street, flowing with the water as it seeks its own level. Have you met the people from that New Orleans? The New Orleans that is dying as I write this, and as you order another sweet tea? I didn't think so.

Your God--the one to whom you prayed today, and likely do before every meal, because this gesture proves what a good Christian you are--is one with whom I am not familiar. Your God is one who you sincerely believe gives a flying fuck about your lunch. Your God is one who you seem to believe watches over you and blesses you, and brings good tidings your way, while simultaneously letting thousands of people watch their homes be destroyed, and perhaps ten thousand or more die, many of them in the streets for lack of water or food.

Did you ever stop to think just what a rancid asshole such a God would have to be, such that he would take care of the likes of you, while letting babies die in their mother's arms, and old people in wheelchairs, at the foot of Canal Street? Your God is one with whom I am not familiar. But no, it isn't God who's the asshole here, Skip (or Brad, or Braxton, or whatever your name is). God doesn't feed you, and it isn't God that kept me from turning around and beating your lily white privileged ass today either. God has nothing to do with it. God doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl. God doesn't help anyone win an Academy Award. God didn't get you your last raise, or your SUV. And if God is even half as tired as I am of having to listen to self-righteous bastards like you blame the victims of this nightmare for their fate, then you had best eat slowly from this point forward.

Why didn't they evacuate like they were told? Are you serious? There are 100,000 people in that city without cars. Folks who are too poor to own their own vehicle, and who rely on public transportation every day. I know this might shock you. They don't have a Hummer2, or whatever gas-guzzling piece of crap you either already own or probably are saving up for. And no, they didn't just choose not to own a car because the buses are so gosh-darned efficient and great, as Rush Limbaugh implied yesterday, and as you likely heard, since you're the kind of person who hangs on the every word of such bloviating hacks as these.

Why did they loot? Are you serious? People are dying, in the streets, on live television. Fathers and mothers are watching their baby's eyes bulge in their skulls from dehydration, and you are begrudging them some Goddamned candy bars, diapers and water? If anything the poor of New Orleans have exercised restraint. Maybe you didn't know it, but the people of that city with whom you likely identify--the wealthy white folks of Uptown--were barely touched by this storm.

Yeah, I guess God was watching over them: protecting them, and rewarding them for their faith and superior morality. If the folks downtown who are waiting desperately for their government to send help--a government whose resources have been stretched thin by a war that I'm sure you support, because you love freedom and democracy--were half as crazed as you think, they'd march down St. Charles Avenue right now and burn every mansion in sight. That they aren't doing so suggests a decency and compassion for their fellow man and woman that sadly people like you lack. Can you even imagine what you would do in their place? Can you imagine what would happen if it were well-off white folks stranded like this without buses to get them out, without nourishment, without hope?

Putting aside the absurdity of the imagery--after all, such folks always have the means to seek safety, or the money to rebuild, or the political significance to ensure a much speedier response for their concerns--can you just imagine? Can you imagine what would happen if the pampered, overfed corporate class, which complains about taxes taking a third of their bloated incomes, had to sit in the hot sun for four, going on five days? Without a Margarita or hotel swimming pool to comfort them I mean? Oh, and please, I know. I'm stereotyping you. Imagine that. I've assumed, based only on your words, what kind of person you are, even though I suppose I could be wrong. How does that feel Biff? Hurt your feelings? So sorry.

But hey, at least my stereotypes of you aren't deadly. They won't effect your life one bit, unlike the ones you carry around with you and display within earshot of people like me, supposing that no one could possibly disagree. But I'm not wrong am I Chip? I know you. I see people like you all the time, in airports, in business suits, on their lunch breaks. People who will take advantage of any opportunity to ratify and reify their pre-existing prejudices towards the poor, towards black folks. You see the same three video loops of the same dozen or so looters on Fox News and you conclude that poor black people are crazy, immoral, criminal. You, or others quite a bit like you, are the ones posting messages on chat room boards, calling looters sub-human "vermin," "scum," or "cockroaches." I heard you use the word "animals" three times today: you and that woman across from you--what was her name? Skyler? What was it you said as you scooped the last bite of black beans and rice into your eager mouth? Like zoo animals? Yes, I think that was it.

Well, Chuck, it's a free country, and so you certainly have the right I suppose to continue lecturing the poor, in between checking your Blackberry and dropping the kids off at soccer practice. If you want to believe that the poor of New Orleans are immoral and greedy, and unworthy of support at a time like this--or somehow more in need of your scolding than whatever donation you might make to a relief fund--so be it. But let's leave God out of it, shall we? All of it. Your God is one with whom I am not familiar, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.

Tim Wise is the author of two new books: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son (Soft Skull Press, 2005), and Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White (Routledge: 2005). He lived in New Orleans from 1986-1996 (AND I LOVE HIM).

dinner at the wharf

We went down to the wharf for dinner tonight. The smell of red tide wafted into the car all along the beach route, but once we got to the wharf, it was fine.

Chris, the bartender, has eyes the color of pumpkin and a wide, sunny smile. He shook everyone's hands and his fingers lingered in my palm as I pulled my hand away. He shot grins at me all evening, as if he knew something about me and I became convinced that he knew that I have secrets. And I do, of course. I've never met him before.

I sat at the driftwood bar, the sea breeze rustled the small pile of napkins in front of me as my eyes swept over the handles on the draft beer taps. I impulsively ordered a Killian's Red to wash down the seafood, though I have never ordered one before. I smiled as I ran my fingers along the frosted glass, thinking of someone I once knew who was fond of Killian's. The ale made me feel warm inside and every muscle in my body unclenched. I ordered a second one and when Chris set the glass in front of me, he leaned in and whispered intimately, "good girl." I looked around to see if anyone else had heard. No. They hadn't.

After we ate, we walked on the beach and watched the sun dip into the gulf. The breeze picked up and bunches of sandpipers blew in and ran back and forth, in and out of the tidewater. The season is changing. I can feel it in the air.

brush step shuffle step

so a group of us is taking a tap dancing class. The youngest is 12 and the oldest is in his 70s. We have one thing in common--we are all veteran actors, some professional, and a few of us are directors and theater technicians. Most of us never tap danced before but always harbored a secret longing to learn how to dance like Gregory Hines.

It started out as a lot of hot air, a bunch of my theater friends laughing it up over beers last year, talking about how we all need to get out of our comfort bubbles and become willing to make asses of ourselves. Serious actors, even amateurs, take themselves far too seriously. And we all agree that humiliation is growth-producing. So it began as idle talk. Then someone actually got on the phone and called every dance school in town (Miss Jeannie's, Miss Lynn's, Miss Judy's -- what the hell is up with all the "Miss" dance schools?) and finally found one that would take a bunch of mostly adult actors and techies on as beginning tappers.

One brave teacher volunteered to work with us--our teacher, Amy (in photo, giving David, a really accomplished director and blossoming hoofer, a few pointers). She has the patience of a saint and she seems so thrilled with our progress. And we have become something of a legend around the dance school. When our class gets rolling on Wed. nights, all the cute little ballerinas from the "real" dance classes gather around the observation windows and watch us tap our butts off. They all seemed more than a little stunned at first. Sometimes their moms watch too. They REALLY looked stunned. And some of my fellow-tappers are much older than some of the ballerina moms. Funny thing--two of the ballerina moms decided to join us this year when the fall class started up. We took a vote and decided to let them in our "special" class.

Tap has lightened me up a lot. I often find myself shuffle-stepping down the cereal aisle at the grocery store and mentally tapping rhythms whenever I hear a snappy tune. Floor surfaces fascinate me now. I cannot resist doing a time-step sometimes, even at the most inappropriate of times. I take note of potential tapping spots, long expanses of smooth flooring are very alluring now.

We just finished learning a great dance routine to "Steamed Heat." And when we strap on our tap shoes, we are all very hot, every one of us. I highly recommed tapping. If you last took a class in 1968, I am talking to you. If you always wanted to try it--what are you waiting for? Get out there and give it a try.

For those about to tap, we salute you.

unglued

I leave for New York this week and I am looking forward mostly to being alone.

I spent a week in NY in September of 2001. I flew home on the morning of Sept. 10th after having breakfast at the World Trade Center. On the way out, I paused at the mailbox on the corner and balanced a cup of take-out coffee in one hand, my elbow holding the mail slot open as I dropped some postcards into the mailbox. They bore silly messages to my girlfriends at work, joking that I knew full well that the postcards would arrive days after I was home.

And they did.

The postcards bearing images of the shimmering Twin Towers at sunset on the front and September 11th postmarks arrived about a week later. A few weeks after 9/11, one of my co-workers returned the postcard that I had mailed to her. She thought it was amazing that I had somehow cheated certain death by 24 hours. She thought I should have the postcard and keep it always, because she viewed it as a sort of talisman.

Every year since I have been in New York on September 11th. The first two years I was on assignment covering 9/11 stories. I am drawn there.

I will arrive at Grace's three days after she's taken off for San Diego and as much as I love her, the idea of coming into an empty apartment in Queens and dumping my bag in the hallway and not having to say hello to anyone or DO anything is one that I relish. I will be required to speak to no one I know, at least for a few days.

My friend Tracy will be in town and she wants to go to Greenwich for the day, so I'll meet her at Grand Central and we will take the train to Connecticut and shop and do lunch and other girlie things she so loves to do.

On 9/11 I will go to St. Patrick's for the 7:00 a.m. mass though I am not a practicing Catholic or a practicing anything. I will hang my press pass around my neck and trek to Ground Zero. I will take copious notes and try to avoid trite cliches.

But the rest of the time, I will remove my watch and stroll endlessly and wander and take the subway out to Coney Island and drink lots of coffee and spend one entire morning at the New York Public Library and just be.

reason #5

for not leaving the kids alone in the costume room with David after he has decided to come OUT!

new orleans

I was thrilled when my big brother left for college in 1977.

Two reasons: (1) I didn't have to share the bathroom with him anymore and (2) I could visit him as much as possible and during his freshman year at LSU, he lived in the athletic dorm. Oh my god, those jocks were a smorgasboard of hottie-ness!

So I spent many a foggy weekend in the late '70s and early '80s prowling the steaming sidewalks of the French Quarter with my bro and his sweaty friends.

Those were halcyon days, my friends.

God bless N.O. May she rise again.

f__k deadline

I have two pieces due at 5:00 p.m. but my friend needs me. I filed one a few minutes ago, but I think my ed. is going to have to wait. I'm dying for a cigarette and a huge cup of joe. But I will send my ed. a sweetly worded f__k-off e-mail, skip the duel chemical rush (I am only a once or twice a year closet smoker anyway) and head over to the hospital armed with chocolate, fuzzy slippers and the latest Oprah magazine. Because my friend needs me.