Bon Voyage - My Son Goes to Paris

My son is leaving for Paris in twelve hours and we can’t find his passport. His bedroom looks like it was raided by the DEA; the content of every drawer, shelf and ledge lies in a heap in the middle of the floor.

When I ask him when he last had the passport, my son looks at me like I’m an idiot.

“How do you expect me to remember? This is mother’s fault. Mother, what did you do with my passport? This isn’t funny.”

“It has to be here,” I say. “Don’t panic, we’ll find it.”

His sister is downstairs, searching our Honda CRV, while my wife looks through the file drawer where we keep our important papers: old tax returns, paid bills, invoices, receipts, warranties, report cards, birth certificates, Social Security cards, and credit cards we never bothered to activate. Everything is there, except the kid’s passport.
 

“Great,” my son says, “I’m not going to Paris after all. Six months of waiting, six months of anticipation, six months of planning, down the drain. My life is ruined! I’m texting Winter.” Winter is his classmate and on-again, off-again friend. They’re in an “on” phase now, and spend hours texting or Skyping one another. Winter has a younger sister named Spring.

“Don’t say anything yet,” I say, checking the pockets of one of his coats. “It will turn up. Did you look in your book bag?”

Of course he looked in his book bag. What a stupid question.

My daughter returns from downstairs and reports that the passport isn’t hiding in the CRV. “Does this mean Gabriel isn’t going to Paris?”

“I found my passport,” my wife calls from the other room, “and a pair of earrings I’ve been looking for. Gabriel, you didn’t give me your passport, you have it and it’s somewhere in that disaster you call a room.”

“No, it’s not,” Gabriel sing-songs from his room. “I gave it to you and you lost it. Thanks, mother, for ruining my life!”

“Look under his futon,” my wife advises.

“Done,” I say. “No luck, although I did find two bowls, a cup, and a box of stale crackers.”

A minute later my mother-in-law calls, wanting to know if the passport has turned up. “Gaby texted me,” she says. “Where could the damn thing be? Did you look under his futon?”

While I’m talking to her mother my wife’s cell phone rings; her sister wants to know if we’ve located the passport. Why, she asks, did we wait until the night before to locate the passport?

My daughter announces that she is tired of looking and is retiring to her room to watch the Disney channel. “Too bad Gabriel isn’t going to Paris. He’s so lame.”

After another twenty fruitless minutes of searching, my son, beside himself, throws in the towel and calls his teacher to tell her the news; she urges him to stay calm and continue the search. His iPhone buzzes repeatedly with text messages from his classmates. His grandmother calls again. His aunt calls again, and then his cousin Mia. We’ve looked everywhere and are running out of ideas.

I’m trying not to panic, but the thought of the $3000 plus this trip cost us has my stomach churning. Adding to my anxiety is the fact that the $3000 is non-refundable. I can’t count the times we have lectured our son about taking care of his important things, like his retainer, his glasses, his student ID card, his iPod and iPhone. The boy is careless and nonchalant about his possessions. I remember how tickled he was the day his passport came in the mail, how he danced around his room talking about all the foreign lands he would visit.

We’ve looked everywhere. It’s growing late. My son’s bags are packed and standing by the front door. He’s in his room, curled in the fetal position atop the mound of clothes. “It’s over,” he wails, “I can’t go. Why is this happening to me?”

“What happened to the blue folder that had every scrap of paper related to Paris?” I ask my wife. “Where is that folder? I bet his passport is in it.”

My wife goes to the computer hutch in the living room and shuffles through a stack of papers, finds the blue folder and, sure enough, the passport is inside.

When we tell him he is going to Paris after all, Gabriel says, with all his teenage smugness intact: “See, I told you it wasn’t in my room.”

Fool’s Anniversary

Ten years ago this month my country invaded Iraq with imperial hubris and the finest military hardware our tax dollars could buy. Armed to the teeth against a hapless enemy, sold a pack of lies by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Powell and Wolf Blitzer, and a phalanx of retired generals and admirals, and all the superstar talking heads on the major networks. Less than a month before, millions of people worldwide took to the streets to protest the Bush-Cheney invasion plan, not that it made a difference; Bush flipped the entire world the middle finger and let the dogs of war off the leash.

I remember Bush’s speech to a joint session of Congress. I was sitting with a friend in the Santa Barbara Brewing Company and I stared at the TV screen with my mouth open and my ears ringing. Invading Iraq made no fucking sense -- it was a bizarre pivot from the occupation of Afghanistan and the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. I never for a second believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, never believed Saddam posed a threat to any but his own citizens who were already staggering under draconian international sanctions.

The stupidity was staggering, and remains so to this day. What a colossal fuck-up this neocon fantasy turned out to be.

We never bothered to get an accurate census of the Iraqi’s we killed, maimed, or displaced because we didn’t care; we were high on our military invincibility, enthralled by footage of our munitions exploding over Baghdad. CNN reported the invasion the same way ESPN reports NFL games.

USA! USA! USA!

Cruise missiles, “smart” bombs, bunker busters; we were told that our munitions were so technologically superior that they distinguished innocent non-combatants from bad guys, homes from infrastructure, hospitals from military barracks. We bought this BS wholesale. I was ashamed of my country, embarrassed by our arrogance and blindness. Any fool knows that war is messy, a cluster-fuck at best, and in war innocent people die. Women die, children die, elderly people die, no matter what the mouthpieces for the Pentagon say.

Reporters were embedded and co-opted; they wore helmets and flak vests, combat boots, and looked ridiculous. Fuck off, Diane Sawyer, useless twit.

When Shock & Awe became quagmire and death for American soldiers, our cowardly leaders moved the goalposts; we didn’t invade to find Saddam’s WMD, we invaded to give the long-suffering Iraqi people democracy and freedom; and when that didn’t materialize, we decided that we invaded to fight Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia.  

It’s unlikely that Bush and Cheney will ever be prosecuted for war crimes; David Petraeus became a hero and media darling for a troop surge that was little more than a funhouse mirror; Rumsfeld went skipping into a comfortable retirement. True to the contemporary American ethos, no one is accountable for destroying Iraq and unleashing a civil war. Our  intelligence operatives tortured Iraqi’s the same way the worst regimes in human history tortured, but we didn’t give a fuck because we felt justified by 9/11.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq required no sacrifice on the part of Americans. Our job was to shop, go to the movies, watch TV, and support our valiant warriors, no matter what, because Boy George and Uncle Dick said so.

History is already in the process of being rewritten, and our depravity in Iraq will be forgotten or forgiven, at least here. Average Iraqi citizens will never forget what we did to them, how we fucked their country over and made their existence more difficult and precarious. We forget, they suffer; we walk away from the destruction we caused, they live with it, every day; we insist on calling it a war, they call it what it was – an armed invasion and occupation.

Happy Anniversary.

PULP

I come home from work and my wife says, “Your children are driving me crazy. You will never believe the day I’ve had.”

“I suppose it’s too late to put them up for adoption,” I say.

“We’re well past the return policy.”

“Any chance the circus is in town?”

“I need a G & T,” she says. “More gin than tonic, please.”

I mix her cocktail, pour myself a goblet of red wine, and we take our drinks out on the deck. We’ve moved on to daylight savings time and the sun is still high in the sky; birds are twittering in the eucalyptus trees, and there’s a definite spring feel in the air.

“Talk to me,” I say.

She talks, I listen.

My wife left our kids at home together so she could take her mother to a doctor’s appointment. Her instructions to the kids were explicit: eat something and then get on with your homework. Don’t talk to one another. Don’t watch TV, stay off Netflix and the Wii. She’s hardly out of the driveway when her phone rings the first time.

“Listen to these messages,” she says, setting her iPhone on the table.

Voice mail from Gabriel:

Mother, why did you buy orange juice with pulp? You know I despise pulp. Is that why you bought it, so I won’t drink the entire carton in one day? Well, I’m here to tell you that your little plan is going to fail, because I am going to strain the pulp from the orange juice. I will strain it and save the pulp, and when you’re not paying attention I will add pulp to your wine, or better yet, one of your gin and tonics. Then you will understand how thoroughly I detest pulp. Never buy this pulp-laden juice again, OK? Let’s make a family rule: no pulp. From this moment on we boycott pulp. I love you. Nonetheless, I am very disappointed about this unacceptable OJ. See you later.

Voice mail from Miranda:

Mom? Mom? It’s Miranda. My brother is acting like a giant A-hole. He says he didn’t steal my jellybeans, but I know he did. His fingerprints are all over this one. He’s such a pig. I know you love him, I just don’t understand why. He’s so annoying and stupid. Tell him he can’t come in my room, ever. I really need you to lay down the law for me on this. By the way, why did you buy orange juice with pulp? It’s awful.

Voice mail from Gabriel:

Mother, if I kill Miranda will I go to juvenile hall or prison? I didn’t take her stupid jellybeans. Any time she can’t find something it’s my fault. Last week is was her favorite pencil, this week it’s jellybeans, next week it will be something else. Can you tell her to leave me alone? OK, love you.

Voice mail from Miranda:

Mom, Gabriel is such a liar! You should take his phone away. Better yet, take his laptop away! I hate my brother! But I love you, mom, you’re the best.

Voice mail from Gabriel:

Hi mother, it’s me again. Mother, we don’t have any food. Can you stop and pick something up? I’m feeling like Chinese. I’d like vegetable soup, orange chicken, shrimp fried rice, curry beef, and one order of egg rolls. And ask for extra fortune cookies, at least six. By the way, I have some rather unpleasant news about the algebra test I took today; I may have failed. Miserably.

Voice mail from Miranda:

Mom, Gabriel peed on the toilet seat and didn’t clean it up! I sat on his pee! He’s so disgusting.

Voice mail from Gabriel:

Mother, Miranda’s lying, it wasn’t my pee. I don’t know whose pee it was, but it wasn’t mine. I know you won’t believe me because you always take Miranda’s side, but I’m telling the truth.

Voice mail from Miranda:

Mom, he’s such a liar. It’s HIS pee. It’s not mine, it’s not yours, and dad isn’t here, so who else’s pee can it be?

My wife says, “Now do you understand why I’m stressed out? I had to turn my phone off so I could focus on what the doctor was saying about my mother. Atypical pneumonia, by the way. The doctor prescribed a new round of antibiotics. Mom has to go back for a follow-up in three days.”

“You sure the circus isn’t in town?” I ask. “We could sell ‘em cheap and take a long vacation. Whadaya say?”

“How about you mix me another G&T.”

“You got it, baby.”

Still Life North Milpas

D, our neighbor, is a mid-thirties white guy with an unhealthy pallor, greasy hair, and a big-boned frame carrying thirty pounds more weight than it should. We have lived next door to D for three and a half years, and in all that time I doubt we have exchanged more than a dozen words. It’s not that D is unfriendly -- it’s more that he’s reclusive and works irregular hours at a software company. He rides a bicycle to and from his job, and never wears a helmet.

No family ever calls on D. Every now and then a couple of his co-workers show up. D has no girlfriend.

Our recycling can is full so I go behind the building to toss some flattened cartons in D’s blue can, only there isn’t room in his can either because it’s stuffed with pizza boxes. I stop counting at twelve. There are beer cans and bottles, too, lots of them.

When he first moved in we figured D for a guy who planned to host many raucous and drunken frat-boy style parties, because he hauled more beer and booze into his apartment than furniture and clothes. Gallon jugs of vodka, gin, whisky, and tequila, cases of Tecate, Budweiser, Coors and Corona. We braced ourselves for a rave that never happened. D moved in and drank all that booze and beer by himself.

D keeps the blinds drawn and the windows closed, even on the warmest days of August and September. Dead insects line his windowsill. A Mexican cleaning lady came to clean the apartment a year or so ago but she left the insects on the sill.

It’s 1:30 a.m. We hear heavy footsteps on the landing, a thud, and then D’s voice: “Fucking lying slut. I’m going to put my fist through your head, fucking lying slut. Go fuck yourself, fucking slut.” He’s on his cell, my wife says, peeking through the blinds. “He’s wasted! He can’t find his key.” I ask if he’s carrying a pizza box.

We go to the grocery store, Vons on Turnpike, to pick up a few things for my wife’s parents. It’s 2:30 in the afternoon and we notice immediately that by a wide margin we are the youngest shoppers in the store. Everyone else appears to be Medicare eligible and a recipient of Social Security; it’s as if Vons has declared this afternoon a Senior Special. Liver spots, rheumy eyes and osteoporosis are the order of the day. Arthritic fingers clutch lists and coupons; the oldsters wheel their carts slowly as if each step causes pain, and they spend several minutes comparing labels for sugar and sodium, fat and carbohydrate. They avoid the lower shelves. Watching them I feel like I’m staring at my future, the stark, inevitable cruelty of old age that I see in my in-laws; in the doctor’s appointments written on the white board in their kitchen, the pill bottles arrayed on their kitchen table, the illnesses that linger longer than they once did. We care for them as we hope our children will care for us when our turn comes.

My wife thinks D fits the profile of a serial killer, and that one day the police will knock on our door and ask if we ever noticed anything unusual about D. Did we smell strange odors emanating from his apartment? What about noises, did we hear any strange sounds? Did we ever notice D carrying rope, nylon or wire? What about medical equipment like syringes or scalpels, IV tubes?

I think D drinks too much to be a serial killer. Though the famous ones who evade capture are bat-shit nuts I assume it takes a certain clarity of mind, steady nerves, and the wherewithal to cover one’s tracks, not something a drunk can do with any consistency.

Tip the Bottle (Some nights that's all you can do)

Tip the bottle, fill the glass. Clean shirts hanging in the closet, fat oranges in the fruit bowl, a stack of bills on the kitchen table, ground beef from New Zealand in the fridge. Woman on the radio says soybean oil isn’t natural, not good for us, and commonly used in all sorts of processed foods. The water beneath our feet is contaminated and the air isn’t fit to breathe. I don’t know if everything that dies one day comes back. Is the city of Detroit coming back? Are the jobs of industrial America coming back, and dragging a new middle class with them? Or is all that buried under rubble? Sequester your dreams. Those smooth-talking fucktards in DC bent us over and shoved it in; the little people will suffer most, they always do. Meanwhile, Senator William P. Dickwad collects his government paycheck and hops on a Gulfstream bound for sunny Miami. Some wealthy donor will hand him a check, line up a couple of quality hookers or a young Cuban lad, ply him with top-shelf liquor and tell him what a patriotic American he is, a credit to the republic. This must be vertigo -- everything is upside down and inside out, spinning, out of balance; failure is rewarded and virtue is punished. God is summoned when needed and ignored when not. In the big houses on the hill the lights are burning bright. Life is good up there; the gates are sturdy, the walls thick, and the roof tiles fireproof. Tip the bottle, fill the glass, more cheap wine from Trader Joe’s. Sangiovese. Sounds like the name of a Mafioso from Sicily. You got a toast for me? Here’s to the revolution, may it arrive before it’s too late. I should read some Henry Miller, lose myself in his mystical mind. Henry called America the air-conditioned nightmare. Way back in the early 1940’s, Henry saw what was coming – saw the wars and the greed, the concentration of power and wealth, the abject cowardice of the ruling class and the surrender of the numbed masses. Henry didn’t give a shit about politics; he only wanted to paint and write, create and dream. He wanted to live his finite moments, breathe the air, feel the sunshine on his back. “To paint is to love again,” said Henry. His Paris days were far behind, the whores grown old and ugly; copies of Tropic of Cancer were smuggled across the prudish American border. The sky is clear and the stars are mocking our planet. Can you feel the love tonight? Yeah, I’m losing it now, my hand slips from the tiller. Maybe we’re all crazy and the world is a giant asylum. The bottle’s almost empty. My advice: find the magic wherever you can -- in the bottom of a glass, in a deck of cards, in a pair of dice, in the pew, in the next wave, in the garden, in a ’66 VW bug, in the woods, in the Mojave desert, in your lover’s eyes, in guitar strings, in the sound of silence.