In the money universe I am a grunt, common and run-of-the-mill, printed by the millions, cut, stacked and bundled, sent to Federal Reserve banks and then dispersed into the world. I doubt very much that you have ever given me a second thought or considered that I might have feelings, dreams, desires and hopes. I don’t blame you for this.
The single. The buck. My life expectancy? Eighteen months, on average. But let me assure you that a month in the life of a dollar bill passes like a year. My kind travel non-stop, hitching rides in pockets, purses, wallets and backpacks, never in one place for long. As crisp, clean freshly printed dollars many of us dream of cozy piggybanks where we can remain in one place, conversing with our metallic cousins -- pennies, dimes, nickels, quarters and the occasional half dollar – as well as the fives and tens and twenties received from relatives in birthday or Christmas cards. That’s the life. Calm, routine, predictable, but mainly, stationary.
Imagine life without the $1 bill. I see that you’re beginning to understand and view my kind in a more appreciative light. Listen now as I tell you how I came to be here, in this silk purse, under this pillow.
My first glimpse of daylight came in New York City when I was handed to a Norwegian tourist – a big boned blonde woman with blue eyes -- by a sidewalk vendor. The woman had a habit of biting her fingernails, and in general seemed nervous and high-strung, traits not normally associated with Scandinavians. For reasons I never understood, she hid me and my kin from her husband, a heavyset fellow who took hours of boring video, mostly of street scenes; he was particularly fascinated by taxi cabs and their drivers, most of whom were sullen looking Hindu or Pakistani men. Ending up in the pocket of one of these men, wrapped in a greasy wad, frightened me, but that was my fate and fate is inescapable. After a visit to the Empire State Building I was unceremoniously wrapped around a bunch of soiled tens, fives and fellow ones – none of them as new as I -- and held captive by a thick rubber band.
The cabbie’s name was Humayun. He smelled of stale cigarettes and onions. When he wasn’t making change for his fares, Humayun kept us in his coat pocket, alongside lint, salted almonds and scraps of tobacco. His cell phone rang constantly and in his native tongue he barked at whoever was calling; more often than not he hung up while the other person was still talking. Humayun grumbled about his customers and made it very clear that he thought goats far superior to people. Into the pocket and out, in and out, until I was peeled off the wad and handed to a woman on her way to JFK and then Philadelphia. She carefully folded me in half and slid me between a snooty twenty and a tired, dog-eared ten. The twenty was talkative, arrogant, and boasted of his recent travels in Atlanta and New Orleans; the ten was weary and morose. I didn’t converse much with either of them.
Sue was the woman’s name, plain, vanilla Sue. After flipping through the airline magazine in her seat pocket she spent the entire flight to Philadelphia working on her laptop. My impression was that she had been jilted recently, her heart crushed and left to wither; now she was immersing herself in work in order to block her pain. Tap, tap, tap on the keyboard, rapid fire, words and numbers, lines and columns, but I was not fooled: her fingers were full of sorrow.
My time with Sue was short and uneventful and, to be honest, I was happy when she traded me for a Diet Coke at the airport and went on her sad way. After a short trip to the night deposit I landed in the hands of a man named Reed who was visiting Philadelphia from Santa Fe. Reed owned an art galley with his wife but I soon discovered that Reed had a secret life with a man named Peter. Reed and Peter. There were monogrammed towels hanging in Peter’s bathroom and fuchsia sheets on the bed. Egyptian cotton. Yes, it was a cozy love nest that Reed and Peter shared, full of books and paintings and delicious smells because Peter was a remarkable cook. They knew many people in Santa Fe and were openly affectionate with one another, which led me to assume that Reed’s wife knew about Peter. Understand that I make no moral judgments – I’m just a lowly $1 bill.
I rode in Reed’s expensive wallet for more than a week and thoroughly enjoyed myself and the ambience of the art gallery. Well-dressed tourists ambled through the gallery, admired the paintings and sculptures, chatted with Reed about color, perspective and style, the attributes of particular artists, up and coming talents on the Santa Fe scene, and enjoyed wine and cheese set out by Peter. This life suited me very much and I wanted it to continue forever, though I knew my hold upon it was tenuous and fleeting. To circulate is the destiny of a $1 bill.
And I did circulate, in places low and high, hand to pocket, pocket to hand, until a wannabe gangster known by the nickname Bobcat scooped me off the counter at a Taco Bell.
Bobcat had seen too many music videos. He wore a baseball cap sideways on his shaved head, a thick gold chain around his neck, a Kobe Bryant jersey, baggy jeans, and new Nike’s. How ridiculous he appeared swaggering around in this getup! The fool boy carried two hundred dollars in worn bills and three ounces of marijuana into an area of Albuquerque controlled by Calderon, a dealer with ties to the Sinaloa cartel and a deserved reputation for vicious retribution on his rivals. When Bobcat, all of seventeen, crossed West Alvarado Street to meet his customer I noticed that my fellow bills, even the $20’s – usually so boastful – had fallen silent, as if they knew something awful was about to happen. I have to tell you that a chill swept over me even before Calderon himself stepped out of the shadows with two henchmen behind him.
Have you ever heard a young man beg for his one human life? It’s not pleasant, believe me, and Bobcat’s tearful pleas for mercy only amused Calderon, who toyed with the boy the way a cat toys with a cornered mouse. In a calm, casual voice Calderon explained how he couldn’t afford to let Bobcat slide. It would damage his reputation and invite others to poach in his territory. He had a business to protect, after all. You’d do the same thing if you were standing in my shoes, right? A man’s not worth shit if he’s unwilling to protect what’s his. Nothing personal, see, just the nature of my business. Shaking his head as if human nature was beyond understanding, Calderon told Bobcat that the tragedy here is that he, Bobcat, has nobody but himself to blame for his current predicament. Who forced you to cross the wrong line with the intent of upsetting the order of things? After ordering Bobcat to hand over the contents of his pockets, Calderon made the trembling boy kneel before a cinderblock wall sprayed with graffiti. If you think it will help, say a prayer, Calderon suggested. Hail Mary, Lord’s Prayer, whatever, and don’t mumble because God won’t understand you, and right now you need him to hear you. Laughing at his own gallows humor, Calderon pulled a pistol from his coat pocket and calmly pumped two bullets into the base of Bobcat’s skull.
We Treasury notes, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America, home of the free and land of the brave, witness more suffering than we deserve. Bobcat’s brains were splattered against the cinderblock wall and this grotesque fact meant nothing to Calderon; he had solved a problem in the same way a plumber solves the problem of a clogged drain, and now that it was resolved he was taking his girlfriend to the movies.
And that is where I parted company with the murderer and found my way to the shirt pocket of a hard working, God-fearing janitor named Luis Valdez, born in Mexico and now making a meager but much appreciated living in Albuquerque with his wife and daughter, Maritza. Luis once worked in an electronics factory in Ciudad Juarez so he was no stranger to exploitation and suffering, the unfathomable cruelty that human beings inflict upon one another without a moment’s hesitation. I felt comfortable in his simple hands and the chill that had gripped me finally abated.
On the day that Bobcat lost his life, Maritza lost a tooth. After Maritza fell asleep that night Luis placed me in a silk purse and slipped me under her pillow, and it is there Maritza found me when she woke. Her gap-toothed smile was as beautiful as any painting in Reed’s gallery. Like her father, Maritza possessed the capacity to be thankful for small gifts.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Rant: Road Rage
The most useless freeway sign in California is the one that reads, Slower Traffic Keep Right.
The major problem with this dictate from the State is that few motorists in California – at least the section of the state between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles that I normally travel – use their rearview mirrors. Of all the accessories on an automobile none is more under used. How do I know this? Because every time I head out on the highway I find myself behind some motorist cruising in the fast lane at 60mph, who, if he or she would simply look in the rearview mirror, would see my car on their tail and change lanes.
Just the other day I was driving south on the 101 in the fast lane when I had to slow for a Toyota Camry doing about 62mph. I had been doing a steady 70mph until I caught up to this joker. I wanted to move into the near right lane and scoot around, but no break in the traffic presented itself. I speeded up to get closer to the slowpoke blocking my way, hoping that he or see would notice me and move the hell over, but this was wishful thinking. The driver of the Camry was oblivious.
I flashed my headlights. Nothing. I tapped my horn twice. Nothing. I let out a string of curses: “Jesuschristassholemotherfuckingpinheadlimpdick.” This made me feel better but did nothing to remove the Camry from my path. I wished my Honda was equipped with a laser beam that could project a message in foot high letters on the offender’s rear windshield:
MOVE…THE…FUCK…OVER.
I hit the turn signal and hoped someone would give me room to pass this jackass, but my fellow motorists were not in a charitable mood.
“Look in the rearview mirror, asswipe,” I screamed.
After a few more minutes of this irritation I had space and made my move, swinging to the right and quickly back into the fast lane in front of the Camry. As I shot by I looked at the Camry’s driver and prepared to salute with my middle finger. “Don’t do it,” my wife said, mindful of the fact that there are a lot of unhinged people on California’s freeways, some of them armed to the gills.
But how could I flip off a white-haired woman who looked like a dead ringer for Mary See? She was hunched over the steering wheel, hands at ten and two o’clock, totally focused on the road directly in front of her.
Nine hours later on a northbound stretch of 101 outside of Ventura it happens again. 9:30 p.m., traffic sparse, I’m doing 75mph with the cruise control on, anxious to get home after a long day at Disneyland, and I’ll be damned if a Jeep Cherokee is in the fast lane doing all of 60mph. Another codger, I thought, a fugitive from Shady Acres nursing home, out for a late night joy ride along the ocean. Though I could have passed easily enough, I stayed on the Jeep’s ass for a mile or two, determined to make a righteous point about the rules of the road. More wishful thinking. The Jeep's driver was yet another California motorist with no use of a rearview mirror and no regard for Slower Traffic Keep Right.
Enough being enough, I veered right and jammed on the gas until I pulled even with the Jeep; old or not, armed or not, I was giving this idiot driver the finger.
Except the driver wasn’t old at all, and neither was the woman sitting beside him. Twenty-something’s by the look of them, sharing what appeared to be a joint, laughing uproariously and taking no notice of me whatsoever. What’s the point of flipping off a couple of stoners who are feeling blissful and at peace with everyone in the world?
I hate it when the joke’s on me.
The major problem with this dictate from the State is that few motorists in California – at least the section of the state between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles that I normally travel – use their rearview mirrors. Of all the accessories on an automobile none is more under used. How do I know this? Because every time I head out on the highway I find myself behind some motorist cruising in the fast lane at 60mph, who, if he or she would simply look in the rearview mirror, would see my car on their tail and change lanes.
Just the other day I was driving south on the 101 in the fast lane when I had to slow for a Toyota Camry doing about 62mph. I had been doing a steady 70mph until I caught up to this joker. I wanted to move into the near right lane and scoot around, but no break in the traffic presented itself. I speeded up to get closer to the slowpoke blocking my way, hoping that he or see would notice me and move the hell over, but this was wishful thinking. The driver of the Camry was oblivious.
I flashed my headlights. Nothing. I tapped my horn twice. Nothing. I let out a string of curses: “Jesuschristassholemotherfuckingpinheadlimpdick.” This made me feel better but did nothing to remove the Camry from my path. I wished my Honda was equipped with a laser beam that could project a message in foot high letters on the offender’s rear windshield:
MOVE…THE…FUCK…OVER.
I hit the turn signal and hoped someone would give me room to pass this jackass, but my fellow motorists were not in a charitable mood.
“Look in the rearview mirror, asswipe,” I screamed.
After a few more minutes of this irritation I had space and made my move, swinging to the right and quickly back into the fast lane in front of the Camry. As I shot by I looked at the Camry’s driver and prepared to salute with my middle finger. “Don’t do it,” my wife said, mindful of the fact that there are a lot of unhinged people on California’s freeways, some of them armed to the gills.
But how could I flip off a white-haired woman who looked like a dead ringer for Mary See? She was hunched over the steering wheel, hands at ten and two o’clock, totally focused on the road directly in front of her.
Nine hours later on a northbound stretch of 101 outside of Ventura it happens again. 9:30 p.m., traffic sparse, I’m doing 75mph with the cruise control on, anxious to get home after a long day at Disneyland, and I’ll be damned if a Jeep Cherokee is in the fast lane doing all of 60mph. Another codger, I thought, a fugitive from Shady Acres nursing home, out for a late night joy ride along the ocean. Though I could have passed easily enough, I stayed on the Jeep’s ass for a mile or two, determined to make a righteous point about the rules of the road. More wishful thinking. The Jeep's driver was yet another California motorist with no use of a rearview mirror and no regard for Slower Traffic Keep Right.
Enough being enough, I veered right and jammed on the gas until I pulled even with the Jeep; old or not, armed or not, I was giving this idiot driver the finger.
Except the driver wasn’t old at all, and neither was the woman sitting beside him. Twenty-something’s by the look of them, sharing what appeared to be a joint, laughing uproariously and taking no notice of me whatsoever. What’s the point of flipping off a couple of stoners who are feeling blissful and at peace with everyone in the world?
I hate it when the joke’s on me.
Friday, May 06, 2011
Gloriously Ordinary
Parenthood is said to bring many joys and immeasurable satisfaction.
I know a few people who hold this opinion, though I am not one of them.
Heartache and worry, maybe, but not so much on the satisfaction scale.
Every day when I take my daughter to school, I see parents doting on their offspring and it reminds me of David Sedaris, who I saw at the Arlington Theatre recently. In a riff on his childhood Sedaris pointed out that he was born before the creation of self-esteem, so his parents put him and his sisters to bed the old fashioned way: “Lights out, shut up. If your father hears any chatter he’ll be back with his belt.”
Contemporary parents, on the other hand, feel derelict if they fail to read a bedtime story for half an hour, then spend another twenty minutes assuring their child that he or she is special, exceptional, gifted, a living miracle and without doubt the center of the universe.
I love my kids, don’t get me wrong, but I tend to think we – my generation, I mean – act insane when it comes to our children. Take play dates, for instance, a concept that absolutely staggers me. When I was a kid – in a society that was as full of dangers and predators as our current one – we’d give our parents a general idea of where we were going and what we intended to do and with whom, and dash off, into the neighborhood, out of touch for hours. We didn’t have cell phones or GPS tracking or picture ID cards with a DNA sample embedded in them. Today our kids’ schedules are so jam-packed with wholesome, supervised activities that we must schedule time for them to play with their friends. “Can Sophia do 3:30 on Tuesday or is 4:00 on Wednesday better? Oh, she has ballet on Tuesday and gymnastics on Wednesday and chess on Friday and Advanced Mandarin on Saturday morning. Wow, when does Sophia sleep? Does she sleep?”
Once in a while, as my daughter and I are waiting for the custodian to unlock the school gate, I’ll overhear other parents, almost always mothers, talking. “Tyler’s doing exceptionally well in his GATE (Gifted and Talented) classes, and I definitely think he has a predilection for medicine. He loves science, and he’s always watching medical shows on The Learning Channel.” “You let him watch TV? We only allow Brianna to watch the Disney Channel for one hour each week – provided she executes all her homework perfectly, of course.” “Tyler will probably attend Stanford or Harvard – he’s such a bright child.” “I see Brianna at USC Film School. She’s very creative.”
I glance at Tyler, expecting to see him reading the Physician’s Desk Reference on his iPad, and instead see that he is picking his nose with reckless abandon, twisting his index finger up and in until he extracts a juicy green mass, which, after long inspection, he proceeds to wipe on his jeans. Definitely Harvard material.
Is it just me or do we put too much pressure to perform, succeed, strive and accomplish on our children? Is it acceptable for them to daydream and goof off, to occasionally stare slack-jawed at the TV or the computer, or climb a tree without parental supervision and a safety net below? Is it OK if our children don’t acquire a foreign language and proficiency on at least one musical instrument by age seven?
The other morning my daughter marched into the living room and announced that she wanted to ask a question about sex. OK, we said, let’s have it. “Can you get pregnant from kissing a mirror?” No, we explained, kissing a mirror won’t do the trick, there’s a mechanical component to it, the joining of a female’s egg with a male’s sperm... We can go into more detail if you want. “No, that’s OK, I just wanted to know about the mirrors.”
We learn later that our daughter’s classmate Elena is fond of kissing the mirror in the girl’s bathroom at school. Each to her own.
Play dates, questions about sex, neurotic parents on the school steps planning their child’s college experience ten years in advance – this is what kills the rapture for me. Childhood comes once and is all too quickly gone. My kids are gloriously ordinary, which is just fine with me.
I know a few people who hold this opinion, though I am not one of them.
Heartache and worry, maybe, but not so much on the satisfaction scale.
Every day when I take my daughter to school, I see parents doting on their offspring and it reminds me of David Sedaris, who I saw at the Arlington Theatre recently. In a riff on his childhood Sedaris pointed out that he was born before the creation of self-esteem, so his parents put him and his sisters to bed the old fashioned way: “Lights out, shut up. If your father hears any chatter he’ll be back with his belt.”
Contemporary parents, on the other hand, feel derelict if they fail to read a bedtime story for half an hour, then spend another twenty minutes assuring their child that he or she is special, exceptional, gifted, a living miracle and without doubt the center of the universe.
I love my kids, don’t get me wrong, but I tend to think we – my generation, I mean – act insane when it comes to our children. Take play dates, for instance, a concept that absolutely staggers me. When I was a kid – in a society that was as full of dangers and predators as our current one – we’d give our parents a general idea of where we were going and what we intended to do and with whom, and dash off, into the neighborhood, out of touch for hours. We didn’t have cell phones or GPS tracking or picture ID cards with a DNA sample embedded in them. Today our kids’ schedules are so jam-packed with wholesome, supervised activities that we must schedule time for them to play with their friends. “Can Sophia do 3:30 on Tuesday or is 4:00 on Wednesday better? Oh, she has ballet on Tuesday and gymnastics on Wednesday and chess on Friday and Advanced Mandarin on Saturday morning. Wow, when does Sophia sleep? Does she sleep?”
Once in a while, as my daughter and I are waiting for the custodian to unlock the school gate, I’ll overhear other parents, almost always mothers, talking. “Tyler’s doing exceptionally well in his GATE (Gifted and Talented) classes, and I definitely think he has a predilection for medicine. He loves science, and he’s always watching medical shows on The Learning Channel.” “You let him watch TV? We only allow Brianna to watch the Disney Channel for one hour each week – provided she executes all her homework perfectly, of course.” “Tyler will probably attend Stanford or Harvard – he’s such a bright child.” “I see Brianna at USC Film School. She’s very creative.”
I glance at Tyler, expecting to see him reading the Physician’s Desk Reference on his iPad, and instead see that he is picking his nose with reckless abandon, twisting his index finger up and in until he extracts a juicy green mass, which, after long inspection, he proceeds to wipe on his jeans. Definitely Harvard material.
Is it just me or do we put too much pressure to perform, succeed, strive and accomplish on our children? Is it acceptable for them to daydream and goof off, to occasionally stare slack-jawed at the TV or the computer, or climb a tree without parental supervision and a safety net below? Is it OK if our children don’t acquire a foreign language and proficiency on at least one musical instrument by age seven?
The other morning my daughter marched into the living room and announced that she wanted to ask a question about sex. OK, we said, let’s have it. “Can you get pregnant from kissing a mirror?” No, we explained, kissing a mirror won’t do the trick, there’s a mechanical component to it, the joining of a female’s egg with a male’s sperm... We can go into more detail if you want. “No, that’s OK, I just wanted to know about the mirrors.”
We learn later that our daughter’s classmate Elena is fond of kissing the mirror in the girl’s bathroom at school. Each to her own.
Play dates, questions about sex, neurotic parents on the school steps planning their child’s college experience ten years in advance – this is what kills the rapture for me. Childhood comes once and is all too quickly gone. My kids are gloriously ordinary, which is just fine with me.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Our Booyah Moment
We got bin Laden.
High five in the streets. Fist pumps in the bar. Crank up the ticker tape parade. Dispatch six F-14’s to do a flyover above New York City.
We got the big bogeyman.
Finally.
Killed him dead they say. Tested his DNA to prove it.
It only took ten years and thousands of deaths and casualties for the US to kill the world’s most wanted man.
This is a triumph for our crack intelligence community and intrepid troops.
Even if it took ten brutal years.
Now what? Does Al Qaeda fold its tent and slink off into the dusk?
Doubtful. It’s likely there will be reprisals, somewhere, for the killing of bin Laden, just as there will be Pakistanis and Afghans and Iraqi’s willing to die as long as their friends and relatives are being killed by US drone strikes or occupation forces. When it comes to death, people have long memories. Bin Laden may be gone, but Al Qaeda will be with us for a time yet.
Killing begets more killing, but we are blasé about it now, as blasé as bin Laden acted after 9/11. Bin Laden indirectly plotted to kill in spectacular fashion; we kill systematically with our powerful weapons, our eyes that see in the dark and through thick walls.
This really is an amazing development on one level. No, I’m not talking about the breathless reporting from Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams, or the sound bites from Uncle Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton; I’m talking about the fact that the US cedes to itself the authority to assassinate a man on foreign soil. If any nation in the world except Israel – which plays by a different set of rules -- granted itself the same authority, the US would be screaming about the rule of law and sovereign rights.
Hypocrisy is unpleasant. Do as I say, not as I do.
But it goes without saying that the US only kills with the purest motivation and in the name of the highest ideals. Right? Our cause is always righteous, though I wonder what the back-channel traffic on this operation looks like, the secret cables between spies and soldiers, diplomats and politicians. And I wonder what the US had to promise Pakistan in order for the latter to cough up bin Laden? Why now? Why not five, six or ten years ago?
But hey, why be skeptical of the US government and its motives? After all, this is the finest government money can buy and it can be depended on to do the will of its benefactors. This is a “feel good” story, frontier justice meted out to the mastermind of 9/11.
The only surprising thing thus far is that Donald Trump hasn’t claimed responsibility for killing bin Laden.
High five in the streets. Fist pumps in the bar. Crank up the ticker tape parade. Dispatch six F-14’s to do a flyover above New York City.
We got the big bogeyman.
Finally.
Killed him dead they say. Tested his DNA to prove it.
It only took ten years and thousands of deaths and casualties for the US to kill the world’s most wanted man.
This is a triumph for our crack intelligence community and intrepid troops.
Even if it took ten brutal years.
Now what? Does Al Qaeda fold its tent and slink off into the dusk?
Doubtful. It’s likely there will be reprisals, somewhere, for the killing of bin Laden, just as there will be Pakistanis and Afghans and Iraqi’s willing to die as long as their friends and relatives are being killed by US drone strikes or occupation forces. When it comes to death, people have long memories. Bin Laden may be gone, but Al Qaeda will be with us for a time yet.
Killing begets more killing, but we are blasé about it now, as blasé as bin Laden acted after 9/11. Bin Laden indirectly plotted to kill in spectacular fashion; we kill systematically with our powerful weapons, our eyes that see in the dark and through thick walls.
This really is an amazing development on one level. No, I’m not talking about the breathless reporting from Diane Sawyer and Brian Williams, or the sound bites from Uncle Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton; I’m talking about the fact that the US cedes to itself the authority to assassinate a man on foreign soil. If any nation in the world except Israel – which plays by a different set of rules -- granted itself the same authority, the US would be screaming about the rule of law and sovereign rights.
Hypocrisy is unpleasant. Do as I say, not as I do.
But it goes without saying that the US only kills with the purest motivation and in the name of the highest ideals. Right? Our cause is always righteous, though I wonder what the back-channel traffic on this operation looks like, the secret cables between spies and soldiers, diplomats and politicians. And I wonder what the US had to promise Pakistan in order for the latter to cough up bin Laden? Why now? Why not five, six or ten years ago?
But hey, why be skeptical of the US government and its motives? After all, this is the finest government money can buy and it can be depended on to do the will of its benefactors. This is a “feel good” story, frontier justice meted out to the mastermind of 9/11.
The only surprising thing thus far is that Donald Trump hasn’t claimed responsibility for killing bin Laden.
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