what was all that noise?
that shouting that crying
while mother slugged down
wood alcohol to prove
her bravery her insistence
on dramatic death
a scene for the ages
against a struggle
for moments
ground fine
ground to dust
against cracked mirrors
father grabbing his ego
furious at being upstaged
taking a firm hold
on bottles and arms
and waists
as if he could tango
without practicing
dancing toward oblivion
with a devil teaching
tentative steps
in shoes
to large to fill
Questions under splendid shrouds
silent, ancient, typewritten,
still beguile across decades.
Fingers move, to distort hands
into silent blossoms, mouths
agape at endless white margin.
A key plays a thought from a fingertip,
sullen and unforgiving,
a steel symbol rattling solitary nights.
Nothing to touch but remembrance,
to fill space except black fonts
from Tuesdays and past lives.
Friends ran far away from home
in gin, orange and bitters,
and that ride tastes like a memory.
Nothing yours that is not mine.
Nothing dark but can be lit.
Nothing moves but what is pushed.
Another of my posts from Ao Vivo from 2007. This is a true story.
For the last few years I've been experiencing an odd occurrence when I go to get my hair cut. So odd, that I bought a haircutting kit for myself, and starting cutting my own hair. For simple cuts like a butch, this is quite easy...buzzzz, buz, buzzzzzz, buzz, click. Done.
Simple. For longer or more complicated cuts one needs the additional help of a couple of mirrors facing each other or a stationary mirror and a special mirror that hooks on your shoulders. These more complicated cuts take a lot more time, but with practice, pretty much anything is achievable.
My hair has what one stylist called a strong wave pattern. That means that under certain conditions it is very curly. However, under other conditions, it appears almost straight. Under particularly foul conditions it looks as though someone has glued a guinea pig to my head. I can understand that cutting my hair would present special problems for hair-cutters. What I can't understand is the reaction I've been getting when I walk into a barbershop or hair salon. But more on that later.
Because I bought this very clever hair-cutting kit, I started getting asked to cut some of my friends hair. I willing did this with the caveat that I am not an expert and have no hair-cutting training except on myself. The first time I actually cut hair was long ago on my mother and sisters who asked me to simply trim off the very ends of their very, very long hair. Nothing very difficult at all; just get the hair damp and cut in a slight downward curve with the longest part in the middle, or for a change in the mood of the person, straight across. I didn't have my handy-dandy hair-cutting kit at that time.
After I got the kit, my first client was a jazz drummer friend who had cancer and pretty much all his hair had fallen out anyway, but I was glad to be able to help in any way I could. The next person who asked me only wanted me to cut his hair very short all over. Not complicated at all; in fact when I thought I had finished he told me he thought it was too long and I took the plastic widgit off the end of the clipper and did it again this time successfully completing the task. Then other people started to ask me to cut their hair. I don't know why, I did not advertise, nor do I especially like cutting hair, but there is a social component that has a certain caché. That means I enjoy doing something for my friends. One friend who has particularly curly hair, falls under the definition of difficult...the hair, not the friend.
Curly hair has a tendency to resist control so you have to kind of let it do whatever it wants to do while giving it a kind of push in the direction the grower of the hair has indicated. Given that I am not a trained hair person, I must confess that it is mildly to strongly important to me to be able to satisfy my friends requests and it becomes a matter of pride to leave them looking as good as possible within my skill level. So far, most of my friends have been at least okay with the results. If they harbored any dissatisfaction, it remained unspoken.
Now, back to my original odd problem.
Before I bought my kit, I had been going into barbershops and hair salons like everyone else. I would enter sit or put my name on a list, or in some cases call to make an appointment for usually between two and three weeks in the future. Sound familiar? I certainly thought my actions were altogether normal. Throughout my life this has been the same. Until about maybe fifteen years ago.
For some reason barbers in general started disappearing, so being a walk-in customer started becoming more difficult. I am not sure why this started happening other than men were wearing their hair longer and barbers didn't seem to have the required skill set, whereas scissor wielding hair "stylists" did and were picking up the slack as well as a lot more money, because naturally cutting hair with a scissors takes a lot longer in addition to having to know all the things you have to know about dyeing, perms, frosting, make-up, etc., etc.
So to gain all this knowledge one has to attend a cosmetology college, which I understand is detailed and expensive and actually the graduate rate is comparable to some high schools. So there is a degree of difficulty not suspected by the average citizen. After talking to a couple of people who attended one of these schools I stopped thinking about cosmetology students the way I've seen them portrayed on film and in urban legend. They really have to work very hard and study their subject. I am not joking...it is hard to become a cosmetologist. But cosmetologists do not study what barbers study and barbers have their own schools and don't study what cosmetologists study. I am not sure why. But what they study is not really important to my story. They are both experts in their fields and I appreciate that. I also understand that if I want a barber cut I go to a barber and if I want a style cut I go to a cosmetologist. Not a problem.
It is also true that if you stay with a barber or stylist for a while they get to know you and more importantly, your hair and its bad habits. It is also true that if a stylist or barber messes up your hair cut, you should point this out immediately and allow them the opportunity to fix it. If there is nothing to fix offer them a tip. I mean extra money. I approve and agree with all of this. Now, having said that, here is the problem.
After spending years with the same stylist she decided she no longer wanted to cut men's hair and made a recommendation to me for another stylist. It was just about here that the problem started.
The stylist she recommended was a fellow who, while cutting hair, kept telling the same joke about rabbits running backward...ha ha ha...receding hare line. Funny once to someone who doesn't have receding hair, not funny at all to someone who does, and really, really boring to hear ten times in a row. And he didn't cut hair especially well, in fact, he cut every man's hair exactly the same...just like his. Not bad if you look like him or have the same kind of hair. But I went back quite a few times because he HAD been recommended and I figured the errors he kept making would be corrected over time. That didn't happen so eventually I migrated to another. Then the problem seemed to get worse.
I would walk in, the hair pro would ask what I wanted to do, I would tell them and then magically my hair ended up looking like whoever was cutting my hair's hair. Did I say that right? It would end up looking like the hair of the person wielding the scissors or clipper. Somehow, I had become a mirror for the hair cutter. Not bad if the hair cutter was my age, general coloring, and had my guinea pig hair. But that never ever happened.
Slowly I came to the realization that there was a solution to this problem; just go to someone of the opposite sex with truly curly hair or straight hair! I did not reckon with the vast black box of the cosmetological mind. I once went to a young lady with absolutely dead straight hair cut in a modified wedge cut. In her case, the wedge was on the side and she had dyed her hair jet black. On her, it was really quite becoming. Not a chance I thought of walking out of her salon looking like that.
Right. I didn't look like her. But if I had dyed my hair black? If I had been about five-two? If I had an impressive rack? Nevermind. Apparently she did her best to make me look like herself; I assume she was severely disappointed. Over the years I have ended up with strawberry blond hair, a shaved head, various other colors, wedge cuts, shag cuts, punk cuts including a kind of mohawk, mullets, rock-and-roll god, and once a cut meant for a man who likes-wants-appreciates-desires, a comb-over. Remember, I have always been asked what I wanted and I have replied in various ways but almost never have I asked for a comb-over, or, if I did, it was by accident.
Recently I decided to get a military style haircut because I thought simplicity would be a way of well, simplifying my hair problem. So I went to a barber because barbers know about clippers and military cuts are clipper cuts. I walked in, sat down and waited my turn like everyone else and watched as the barber, one of two in this shop, finished a cut well known in the world as a flat-top.
Perfect, I thought, I had flat-tops in the distant past before my problem started. I like flat-tops even though my guinea-pig hair needs a lot of hair glue to train it into that shape. My turn having arrived, I stepped into the chair and being asked what I wanted replied, "I would like a flat-top." And I said it quietly with a kind of controlled excitement, because I was really looking forward to a flat-top after the comb-over.
The barber reacted...strangely. He made a noise with his throat that seemed to be a word that didn't quite make it out of his mouth, simultaneously doing a kind of physical jerking with all of his limbs at the same time. As he did his rather odd performance, I stared in astonishment. When he repeated it in a toned down version, I actually felt a little frightened. I thought perhaps he was having a petit mal seizure and I was actually relieved when he finally recovered enough to ask me if I had ever had a flat-top with the implication that if I had not, I not only shouldn't but wouldn't get one in HIS shop. Of course I replied in the affirmative. He had another brief seizure. But he added a kind of petulant foot stomp.
More recently, I started looking for someone to cut my hair again and since I was in a different neighborhood and didn't have an appointment, neither did I want to wait for two weeks, I looked around for somewhere that would take walk-ins and began my hair trek…my first disillusion occurred when I couldn't find a barber at all, but I did not give up and started my interviews. It was one o'clock in the afternoon because I was hoping that waiting till after lunch would calm the fears of my approach in any cosmetological heart.
I saw one salon which was empty, open till nine and had a lovely looking woman who looked up at me as I made my approach with a lovely smile which quickly faded, then walking very quickly disappeared into the back of her shop and did not re-emerge. Not a good sign but there were others.
My next stop took me to a "full service salon" with massage of various sorts, hair, nails, and what-have-you. The woman working looked out at me getting out of my car and quickly disappeared like the first, but reappeared, looking scared but smiling. Now that I reflect, she was shaking a little. "Hi!" she said quite cheerfully. "How can I help you?" The smile was charming and I replied that I was (since I knew getting an appointment was pretty much out of the question) just checking out whether she did men's hair, did I need an appointment, did she take cash, cheque, plastic, that sort of thing.
Her eyes started doing this kind of shifting from side to side; not making eye contact is a bad sign but I continued nonetheless. After my rejection at the first place, it was now about 1:15, so with everyone staying open so late, I still had hope. When she finally made eye contact it was as though she had got a really good idea. "I have an appointment coming in at 3:00!" she said almost like she was surprised by the spontaneity of the thought, "soooo..., I can't take you...but the lady who owns the place will be in later, and she might be able to take you next month...or whenever." She then, back in her comfort zone, explained the payment policy of the salon and said, "sorry I can't help you today." I felt she sounded suspiciously relieved but I left anyway.
My search finally found one of those chain outfits that seem to always have people waiting and also have a lot of people working to get customers through in the shortest amount of time. There were two men being trimmed and one waiting when I walked in. As I did, if you can imagine the sound of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly theme playing, you will have a notion of what kind of looks crossed the faces of the women working there. One of them, a rather vapid looking bleached blond immediately started asking her customer lots of questions about his sideburns and slooooooowly slooooooooooowly started cutting little tiny hairs off the back of his neck. She had been using clippers but seeing me, shifted instantly to scissors. The other woman knew she had "lost the toss" but slowed her own customers progress to a crawl, which, I might add, made him smile. When a third woman made an appearance, she smiled broadly, I am sure because she thought hope had arrived, but she was wrong because there was the guy ahead of me! The new woman took one oh so casual look at me and walked sloooooooowly to the register to check in, then sloooooooooowly walked into the back room to get her wrap. Then she ever so slooooooooooooowly put her station together and finally turned, and looking at me, said with a strained voice, "who's next?" The young man sitting next to me got up and her color returned to normal.
The woman who took me had long, badly conditioned, straight black hair. She also, I saw, had quite a few teeth missing. I was a little scared because I was sure she was thinking, "What a challenge!" She was also Asian, but I didn't think she could figure a way through that. Because my hair had grown to an unprecedented length I know she was startled because when I asked for a flat-top, her mouth opened, revealing the previously mentioned dental absence, and dropping into a kind of shocked/disappointed sneer.
"You wanna fla’-top?" She stated incredulously. I know, it was a question, and it HAD a question mark, but it was a statement. I don't know how she did it.
I replied yes, yes I did want a flat-top. But then she asked me whether I wanted a long flat-top or a short flat-top! And somehow I knew I had a problem. The blond across the room smiled and said quickly she was leaving, but she kept staring at me. Being polite I stared back. I noticed that she kept the stare going as she backed out the door. I like to think it was because she thought that a challenge had slipped through her hands.
My cutter kept my face turned away from the mirror...a sign I have come to know as bad. She looked perturbed as she touched my head but I was VERY cooperative when she wanted my head in the right position, she was after all, holding a scissors. She kept stepping back and forth like she was trying to get the correct perspective. And I know she was cutting hair because it kept falling around me, retaining of course, its miserable little curves. On a couple of occasions she accidentally had me facing the mirror, but quickly grabbed my nose or my chin and yanked my face away from seeing anything. At last, she turned me toward the mirror and asked triumphantly, "what do you think?" I had her.
“No,” I said, “it doesn't look like a flat-top.”
She was over-confidant because she had already removed the paper from around my neck and had the smock half-way off. Without speaking she dropped the tissue paper on the floor and threw the smock back on me without fastening it and resumed cutting. It was clear that my hair had won when she told me she wouldn't charge me. She also, with an asian accent that hadn't been there when we started said something like, "I won tak you now," when I offered to pay.
She was not happy, but I still had all my teeth.
This is another post from my old Myspace blog, Ao Vivo. A friend was teaching English in China at the time and shared some of his adventures with me and his adventures reminded me of some of my adventures. This is, as they say in the movies, based on real events. The loveliness of this particular blog post is that I know exactly when I posted it, but the question remains: what was I doing up so early in the morning?
Subject The Breath of Nostalgia...Aaaaaaaah..uhhuck..uhhuck!
Posted Date: Saturday, March 31, 2007 - 6:47 AM
Genghis K just blogged about an adventure he had and it reminded me that adventures come in bunches like grapes.
Yes, nostalgia is rearing its ever so ugly head, and once again I plunge into the misty waters, I mean muddy waters, I mean polluted, sewer-like water that flows somewhere in my poor besotted head.
Today, I had my afternoon tea in a pseudo Russian tea house, quite pleasant except for bad music, in San Francisco. I was seated next to some young people who were busy trying to create a future of wealth and happiness by, I am not kidding, filming yoga classes, and selling them as something called video casting (?) on the internet. Their group was made up of an older (retirement age) woman, a young woman of 34, a blind black man from England, and a young man who was trying to sell them on the idea of video casting. Forgive me if I do not understand this concept.
In the world of the theater and film, casting is what is done to acquire actors for roles. The way this fellow was talking sounded like info-mercials. And he was rather confident that people would swarm in vast enough numbers to this cause that sponsors of one sort or another would be flocking to buy advertisements on, in and around this short video of the young lady teaching yoga. Okay, I don't get it, but that's alright because it wasn't what I was going to tell you about anyway.
This all started because the young lady said her goal was to travel. She taught yoga. But she wanted to travel and that was all. Because of our proximity in the restaurant, and the fact that she had already traveled somewhat, India and Thailand at least, my companion and I, having traveled quite a bit, butted into their conversation (it wasn't really going anywhere anyway because the young lady didn't really understand the concept of video casting either) and the whole group started sharing travel stories. This story I'm going to tell you isn't one of the ones I told.
Years ago, or maybe I should start, once upon a time...no, that won't do. I was in Manila, P.I. That sounds exotic enough, and believe me it was. It was one of those tropic evenings when air temperature and skin temperature and street temperature and clothing temperature are all the same and the humidity is at about 99 percent. Anytime one sweated, the only way to tell was if you touched yourself, given that you do such things, and you slid off. At the time, Manila was under martial law, and the Philipines under Ferdinand Marcos, who was the fellow who imposed martial law. Martial law meant there was a midnight curfew for anyone except, of course, the fellows enforcing the curfew. So every evening, toward 11:30 pm, people scurry off to their homes or hotels or whatever looked to be the most convenient and safest shelter. I do not know where the homeless, and there were many of them, went.
I decided to brave the limits of curfew and taking my walking stick, I am a very toney guy at times, and my camera for possible night photography, I set off to look for the very famous Papagayo's. A Mexican restaurant in the heart of Manila known all over the China Sea as a great place for, well, Mexican food. As I left my lodgings, a comfortable US Naval vessel, and walked toward wherever Papagayo's might be, a man walking along the street in the same direction began to engage me in conversation.
An unusual situation in any place, but in the Philipines, pretty much unheard of because poor Philipinos have little in common with Americans of any stripe. His conversation consisted pretty much of a discussion of the weather and where was I headed and did I know there was a curfew? Being a polite and friendly sort I took in his appearance and thought, hmmmm...awfully friendly. He was wearing what looked like a prototype uniform for UPS. A little brown man in a little brown shirt and little brown pants with little brown shoes. But very friendly.
When I told him I was headed for world famous Papagayo's he said excitedly, "I KNOW WHERE THAT IS!" This seemed to me to be a little over the top, as most people know, at least in Manila, where Papagayo's is to be found. But then he added, "I can take you there if you like!" I thought, my, he IS friendly, and after asking him if he wanted to be paid for the task, since many people who approached you on the street then were actually doing a fancy form of panhandling. To my surprise he said no, it would be his pleasure to guide me to the world famous Papagayo Restaurant. When I said that I really wanted to walk along the waterfront because I was looking for night photos, and if he could just tell me I would be eternally grateful, he replied that there was no time to lose, it was some distance and might be closing soon. So I asked, worried now about the time, how far was it. "Not too far," was his reply. Ah hah! You say. First he says it was some distance and then he says not too far, which is also what I said, out loud.
His confusion was only momentary and he babbled something rather incoherent. Well it was incoherent to me because I do not speak Tagalog. Then he smiled broadly, did not answer the question, at least in English, and said to follow him. Being an adventurous type, I did. And he lead me right to world famous Papagayo Restaurant. Believing that he might have been up to something and finding to the contrary relieved me and I asked him if he would like to join me. This he refused, but he did follow me into the restaurant. I found this odd. The manager of the restaurant also found it odd, but seemed to accept the sight of the two of us as just another odd thing in another odd day.
I repeated my offer of dinner and again he refused, so I offered at least something to drink. After repeating that offer he finally accepted a coca-cola. Yes, they also have a bottling plant in the Philipines. I ordered my dinner, chicken molé and the little brown man sat opposite me talking about how well protected tourists were in the Philipines and had I ever been out to the military cemetery and did I know that Imelda Marcos had built the new civic theater in only three months, etc., etc. His coke had arrived but he just seemed to enjoy talking. At about 9:30 pm I had received the bill and asked the hostess if she could change American money which she assured me she could and went to ring up my total.
While she was gone the little man said, "you know, you can get a much better rate than here." I being the frugal man I am said, oh? "Yes," he told me, "you can get a much much better rate than that." The rate he then suggested was more than triple the "bank" rate. Wow, I would be rolling in little Philipine pesos. But, he informed me I would have to take a short trip outside the restaurant. This sounded like a lot more work but greed won the day and when the hostess returned to my table carrying my bill, I asked her if she would mind if I just slipped out for a little bit because the little man had just told me he could get a very good rate of exchange for me. She looked extremely startled, giving the little man a rather dismissive glance, but said it was all right with her and I thought at the time that her doubtful tone came from a worry that I wouldn't pay. To answer her unspoken question I said I would leave my camera and walking stick and a jacket I had been carrying because I originally thought the night was going to cool off. It didn't.
The little man seemed to be very enthusiastic about my leaving my things in the restaurant because, he said, "they will be sape, in de Pilipines, de tourist is bery sape, because de gobermen is bery strick wid how tourists mus be tritted!" Then for some odd reason, the hostess chimed in her agreement to this, "yes yes de gobermen is bery bery strick..ip you wan to leeb your tings here, dey will be here when you get bahck." I had a sudden thought that perhaps they knew one another, but the look the lady was giving the little man was ferocious. He nodded in agreement and I left my camera sitting on my table with jacket flung over the back of my chair and my walking stick leaning forlornly against the table and giving them what I thought might be a last look, started out the door. The hostess repeated as we left, "dey will be here when you get bahk."
At that point I wasn't even sure why, maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the night, maybe it was the romance, but I was leaving three hundred dollars worth of camera, minus the telephoto lens, the macro lenses, various filters and assorted camera stuff worth three hundred more on a restaurant table in the middle of Marcos' Manila, because I wanted triple twenty dollars worth of Philipine Pesos. This in the days when three pesos bought a haircut, a facial, a manicure and a torso massage in an average barbershop (see my last blog). The walking stick could easily have been replaced, I bought it in Manila, and in that wet, heated moment I wasn't sure I ever wanted to see the jacket again. But nonetheless I was excited by the thought of triple twenty dollars worth of pesos.Turning left out the door the little brown man lead me into the back streets of Manila.
Now when I say "streets" I may be exaggerating a little. Some of the streets weren't big enough to drive on and had probably been there since the Spanish had left. It was like a scene out of Casablanca, only this wasn't a set. Dim streetlights casting strong black shadows into corners where very dimly, I could see things piled up or people standing, talking. It did not occur to me at the time, I was after triple value, but I wonder what they were talking about? Maybe the exchange rate.
Interestingly, even at the time, the little man would stop somewhere and ask me if I knew where Papagayo was, and if I didn't know, always point and say, "it's right ober dere." I thought this most charming and thanked him every time. We stopped in some unusual locations: a cigarette vendor sitting on the street with various brands spread out in front of her, under a moorish arch (I told you it was like Casablanca) where a young man was leaning with an insouciant air, smoking a nasty smelling stogie, a barbershop where the little man wasn't greeted bery politely for some reason, but as it was getting on toward curfew, we hurried on.
Each time we stopped, he would re-orient me to Papagayo then take the twenty dollar bill from me and make his request of whatever person was in line for exchanging money at triple the bank rate. He always conducted business in Tagalog and it seemed everyone seemed either bored or not interested, or in the case of the barbershop even a little hostile (see my last blog). But I was patient, I was going to get triple the going rate. After every unsuccessful try, he would return the twenty to me with a comment about the lack of cooperation or why the person couldn't change the bill just now.
Near 10:30 pm he stopped me across the street from a rather non-descript two storey building with no windows on the street level that seemed to take up the better part of a block and told me once again where world famous Papagayo was from where we were standing, told me he would be right back, this would be slightly more difficult, etc., etc. and just to wait right here. With that he once again acquired the twenty dollars and setting his shoulders looked across the street at the single door and marched through it, closing it behind himself. And there I waited.
The single streetlight was glowing softly with tropical insects circling in its halo. A broken sign was hanging askew, marking the building as the Atlantic Hotel. Atlantic? The street was empty of automobiles. Just over the top of the building I could just see the quarter moon floating. The only sounds were my shoes scraping on the dirty sidewalk and the broken neon of the sign giving off a random buzzing. There were old cooking odors and the smell of spilled tar and burnt wood saturating the mood. And I waited.
At about 10:45 pm I looked at my watch and thought, hmmm. Should I go see how he's doing? He had told me that perhaps this would take more time. So I waited another five minutes. 10:50. I pulled myself together and told myself quietly, "I think I've been had." But just in case I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, I waited another couple of minutes. 10:52.
If you have never been in a country where marshal law is in place, you will not quite realize the rising panic that sets into people as curfew approaches if they are on the street. Curfew means that if you are caught on the street, you will be taken by the police, or the miltary police to some holding cell somewhere. In the Philipines at the time I had heard rumors of people getting taken to some subterranean box below the Malacanang Palace and being permanently lost to public view. This always struck me as unrealistic because Malacanang Palace was where Ferdinand Marcos lived and why would he store curfew breakers there. But then, the thought of people chained to walls directly below all that florid tropical opulence and all those pairs of Imelda Marcos shoes made an interesting juxtaposition. 10:53.
I made a decision to cross the street and enter the Atlantic Hotel, or what was left of it, and attempt to find the little brown man in his brown clothing.
When I passed through the door, I became immediately aware of what had happened. The wall of this building to my left was a two-storey wall and nothing more, extending all the way to the next building. The hotel had probably lost half of its bulk during the world war and minus materials, the residents and owners had left the wall standing, perhaps in the hope that the missing half would be rebuilt. In the meantime, that missing half provided a garage for a few cars which had to enter from an alley which couldn't be seen from where I had waited, the sad remainder of wall of the hotel blocking any view of it. Directly in front of me a wall, a much repaired wall, which still had supports showing from where upper floors had once extended ran at right angles to the street. To my right, parallel to the street a staircase lifted much worn and broken steps to the remaining upper floor. The whole staircase seemed to have settled downward on the side away from the street and where the rail had been were nail holes or supports sticking out from the wall like beckoning fingers. At the very top of the flight of stairs a single bare bulb hung from a wire, any glass covering and fixture long gone.
There was a door at the top of the stairs with a small diamond pane of glass in the center through which light came, more light it seemed than from the dim bulb. Looking at the stairs I hesitated a moment, but then made a nothing ventured-nothing gained decision. Pressing my hand against the wall as a support I picked my way up the stairs and nearing the top could hear a murmur of conversation in Tagalog. Just general conversation and a little laughter floating like someone had told a joke that was mildly humorous. Reaching the top of the steps, I looked through the little window in the door to see a group of people sitting on benches around what appeared to be a kind of make-shift lobby. Men and women engaged in post-prandial talk, some of them still holding plates with the remainders of what looked like adobo.
I thought, should I go in and if I do, what will I say? Phooey, says I to myself, faint heart never won fair lady, and pushing the door open I stepped into the florescent lit room and stopped the conversation dead in its tracks. It was almost as if I had every person's head in the room on a set of strings and pulled them toward me.
"Hi." I said. Everyone stared. "Hi...I'm looking for..." And I stopped in mid-sentence because I knew if I said I was looking for a little Philipino man, any man in the room would fit the description. So I looked for a little brown man in a little brown shirt and pants and little brown shoes.
"Do you want a room?" the man behind the desk said with a great deal of composure.
"Ah...I..was looking for....a guy......that might have come in... here...maybe. He was wearing....well...a brown...he was wearing brown..."
Patiently the desk clerk asked again, "do you want a room?" And then he smiled...in a sort of friendly desk clerk way.
No....I was looking...for....a bathroom." A bathroom? I didn't need to use the bathroom. I just needed to leave that lobby. The little brown man wasn't there and I just needed to leave. These people were here because some of them I suppose lived there and others were there because it was off the street and away from the brown-shirts who could and did shoot people on sight. It was almost curfew.
The desk clerk calmly said, "down that hall on the left," pointing me across the lobby. It was rather like running the gauntlet. The stair was behind me, in front of me a crowd of people who looked like customers in a comedy club who had just been treated to a performance of Coriolanus when they had expected Robin Williams. But I crossed the room creating a wake of stares.
The corridor ran away from the lobby and toward a wall, which hadn't been completely sealed after the missing half of the building went missing. From the broken end of the corridor, I could look out over the make-shift garage. From that perspective I could see how the little brown man had just walked through the street door and continued right through into the alley without even a pause. Wow, I thought. He sure knows his way around!
I suddenly realized that I DID have to use the toilet and turning to my left, I spied "the restroom". It probably had been at one time a broom or linen closet but with most of one side blown off, like the corridor, it had been boarded up on the garage side and turned into a toilet...sort of. Another partition had divided the former closet in approximately equal halves and bed sheet curtains hung on the corridor side which somewhat concealed the individual's business from the rest of the world. On the war and water damaged floor stood a tin bucket in each half. There was no light at all except what came from another bare bulb down the hall through the curtains or leaked in through the incomplete wall on the garage side. I wondered where they dumped the buckets? I suddenly did not have to use the hotel facilities any longer and hastily backed out and returned to the lobby.
With as much aplomb as I could muster, I thanked the desk clerk and waved a cheery goodbye to everyone sitting on the benches around the room. The desk clerk politely said, "if you want a room come anytime." The rest of the crowd was non-responsive. I had a little difficulty opening the door to the stairs and a woman sitting near the door reached over without standing and unlatched it. I smiled at her. There wasn't even a moment of acknowledgement, she just turned back to her companion.
Closing the door behind me and beginning my descent of the stairs, I heard a burst of talking and some loud laughter and then a comment and another wave of laughter. Back in the street, before I stepped into the street, I checked my watch again and took a deep breath to make my way back to world famous Papagayo. It was now 10:59 pm.
Almost magically, I was back in the restaurant where my camera, walking stick and jacket were the only customers. The hostess was more than just happy to see me. She was effusive. It was like I had returned from the dead. It was 11:07 pm. She told me then that in the Philipines there was only one legal rate of exchange. Now she tells me, I thought.
She kept going on about how I could have been killed for my money, didn't I know that Manila at night was dangerous because anyone out after curfew could be shot and by the way she had a niece that needed a husband. Let me give you her address. No, let me give you my address. You write to me and tell me everything. I gave her a twenty at last and she exchanged it at the official rate giving me some of those colorful notes with Jose Rizal's picture. Then she talked some more after I promised to write and I collected my things from my table.
It was now 11:27 pm. I did not have time to get back to the ship. So I ran to the edge of Rizal Park and into the lobby of the nearest tourist hotel and made my speedy way to the desk and requested a room.
We only have one room left." I was informed. "It's da Presssidensheeal Swit." How much I asked. The figure was about sixty American. Remember this was when barbers were cheaper (see my last blog). I gasped a little and asked how long it was till curfew. "Fibe minutes." Not enough time to even sprint the distance to the ship. What could I do besides the Presidential Suite? "Well...you could slip in da lobby! Dere are many many piple dat slip in da lobby at curpew." I really don't want to be one of them, so I said give me the presidential suite and handed over the money.
Just then a compadre from the ship ran in the door panting from running, and seeing me ran straight up and asked me, "did you get a room?" "Yes, I did." And without waiting any longer turned rather breathlessly to the clerk and told him he would also like a room. Primly the desk clerk told him I had just bought the last room. "Shit!" said my friend. "Now what am I going to do?" The desk clerk asked me if I knew the gentleman and when I indicated the affirmative, he told me the presidential suite was quite large and would probably accommodate my friend as well as myself if I was willing to share.
"Yeah, that's a great idea!" my friend said. I noticed he hadn't asked me first and to me that is rather like reaching across to someone's plate to take food without asking.
"Is it?" I asked rather archly.
"Yessir," the desk clerk misunderstanding my tone offered, " de pressidenshial swit is bery large and comportable. I tink dere might ebem be two bets."
"Come on, man! Two beds! That's great!"
"Perhaps you could share de cos wit de gennelman, sir?" Now that was a great idea!
"Well," said my friend, "how much was it?"
"Sixty." I told him rather flatly.
"That would be like twenty bucks!" Apparently he had failed arithmetic.
"No," I replied flatly, "that would be like thirty bucks." My friend's already pale complexion blanched even more and he suddenly got very serious.
"I can't afford thirty, man. I've only got twenty...twenty-two something." He counted every coin. "Twenty-two...ha ha ha...thirty-one."
I struggled with demons. "Give me the twenty, then." I thought that was more than fair.
"But, I'm supposed to go to blah blah blah and blah blah blah tomorrow." he whined.
"Really? And what is keeping you from enjoying one of those lovely sofas in the lobby and saving us all this debate?"
"You're kidding?" he asked like he had just been handed a turd.
"Why would I be kidding? This room cost sixty dollars and you want to share it. Half of sixty is thirty. What did you think was fair?" I am not really much of a haggler, but I think I was trying to see how far my demons would push me, especially after my adventure in currency exchange.
My friend thought a moment and said, "if I had just got a room and it was the last room, I'd share it with you." What did that mean, I wondered, and left him in silence to explain himself. "I'd share a room with you," he repeated. Rather snipingly, I told him he would never have paid sixty dollars for anything, much less a presidential suite.
"Well, no, but whatever I got I'd share with you."
This really was over the top; he wasn't even that good a friend. This was a guy who would collect people together to hum the Battle Hymn of the Republic behind him, while dramatically reading naval history stories. Come to think of it, that was almost worth the price of admission.
"OOOh alright, ya little piker." I relented. I am such a soft touch.
"Dose dis min da gennelman will be staying in da pressidensheeal swit?" the desk clerk asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Bery well, may I hab da front take you bahgs?"
"No," I said feeling rather sleazy, "this is just a one night stand."
Without even cracking a smile, the clerk answered, "bery well, sir...da front will take you to your room." Docilely I followed the bellboy and docilely following me, my friend. We all mounted the elevator to the penthouse Presidential Suite. Grandly opening the double doors the bellboy opened all the doors and closets showing us what the suite had to offer and then stood patiently waiting for his tip. I looked at my friend and said, "pay the man."
My friend blanched again, "I don't know how much?"
"You have got to be kidding? A couple of bucks will do." When he started to whine, I handed the boy five dollars. I think I did it just to make my friend feel bad.
When the bellboy left, my friend started dancing around the room girlishly gushing, "this is great!! This is great!!!" Tiresome. Just tiresome.
And then I remembered something. The little brown man had never even touched his coke.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a social media platform called Myspace where I kept a blog called Ao Vivo. That's Portuguese. Recently, I was reviewing some of the posts I'd written from it and this one scrolled into view. I don't recall writing it, but then I write a lot of things I don't recall writing ... or thinking ... or in this case, dreaming. This is from a series of posts I called Tales from the Nine. Most likely, it was written in or around 2005.
On The Origin of Specious...
Would someone please explain to me why, if dreams are merely garbage sorting mechanisms, they can't just do it like it's done in the waking world? Why is it necessary to resymbolise and change the paperwork to look like something else? Perhaps, I say blithely, they work just like private enterprise and bad government bureaus; everything has to "look good" and "balance" at the end of the day, so the owner/manager does the obvious...cheats.
Last night, or rather just before I woke up this morning, which happened to be nearly not morning as I arose quite late because my job at the Nine has shrunk like a man's penis in very cold water. The hours there have become nearly invisible...sorry I digress. The dream.
Very late this morning I had this dream.
What the dream involved, as I am sure you guessed by now, was my chasing a very beautiful woman and having to compete for her with a guy who was strong and handsome and not very bright. She was genuinely interested in me, but, in the way of dreams, had some long-term, ongoing connection with the other guy, who wanted her to see him as something more than a boy-toy with large lifting muscles and great hair.
Since she felt so guilty not thinking about him as anything other than a nice ornament, and he did have the unfortunate habit of getting excited and ... um ... well ... getting and excited and ... sort of ... losing control of his ... um ... child producing apparatus ... with all the attendant side effects ... did I say that right? Anyway, she felt guilty for just once in a while hanging on his arm because she thought it was sort of encouraging him, which she told me she didn't really want to do, but there it was. He was a lovely chap to have hanging on her arm, but exchanging ideas and conversation were ... well ... hmm ... let me put it this way, he had limited originality. So she seemed attracted to my somewhat greater mental capacity. And I must say she made a nice ornament for me.
And now you say, ha HA!! He just said she was an ornament and now he has told us what we really want to know! And you might be right, but let me finish.
Yes, she was quite beautiful with one of those girly-girl sort of shapes, and I'll leave it to your imagination what kind of shape that is, because she was in my dream and I don't want to clutter my ideers of beauty with whatever you happen to conjure up. So beautiful ... and able to carry on conversation, and here's the problem, in a limited sort of way.
Yes her old friend, the big-muscular-perfect-hair fellow, couldn't have carried on a conversation if his life depended on putting a complete sentence together, was indeed limited. Not to mention the unfortunate side effects of his propensity for excitement, which made him even less verbal and, in fact, had quite the opposite effect. Whenever, and that was quite often, he got excited, he started issuing the kind of sounds unknown since, say, the age of pre-tool making capacity. Not the complicated system of grunts we call language. No. It was just the grunts without the complication. I suppose that is a very round about way of saying he became very non-verbal, which, together with all the other side effects made him just a tad messy to be around. But, he said scientifically, a very interesting and mostly cheerful specimen. But, and here is the big but, nay, I have said the wrong thing, here is the large exception ... she herself, while better at conversing about most things, seemed to steer the conversation continually back to the same things, which were, in this order, the big guy's conversational limitations, I originally missed a key typing this and wrote 'imitations', which, when you think about it, is kind of what he did ... sorry ... the second thing, and ... ahem ... her lengthy period of estrus.
Now, I ask you, why would my masculine brain contrive to turn some awake-time thing into such a symbol? But it gets stranger, Stranger.
At near about the three-quarter point in dream time, I found out from this beautiful creature (her) that the other beautiful creature (him) was, in spite of his manly look, actually part ... and I feel so silly telling you this, but with red-face glowing, here it is ... he was actually part something else. And this is really how the conversation in the dream went. When she told me he was actually part something else and from her conspiratorial tone when she said it, I assumed it had to be something really unusual. Like Lithuanian. Not so, said she, and she looked at him like the old friend he was, admiring the bulging biceps and pectorals, he is half lion. ... Blink ... Blink ... Blink.
"Lion??" I asked with my nearly scientific intelligence trying to recatagorise whole families and genuses and phylums, etc. Yes, I was thinking, thinking, thinking. How could two such species get anything like a hybrid like this? Was this possible?? Naturally, I immediately thought, he has to be, you know, like a mule ... sort of. But at least mules come from creatures that look somewhat alike! Lions and humans? Or, at least I added thoughtfully, human-like. But the oddest thing was, in spite of my questioning, I took her at her word, or words, whatever. So we sat there, on a little cement retaining wall, (see? I told you dreams have strange symbols!) discussing this; is this miscegenation? Anyway, as we had our little chat, we watched him get more and more excited until, sure enough, just like a cat, he started to spray. Please forgive my bluntness, I myself was quite taken aback. But that's not all! As she and I spoke, I admired how clever she was to know this and, in a fit of my own excitement, asked what her own background might be.
I can tell you I nearly became inarticulate myself. In the course of this retaining wall talk, she admitted that she was also the result of a combination effort. Blink ... Blink ... Blink ... But, but, but, I stuttered, you don't look like anything but a rather attractive woman! Yes, said she, I AM rather attractive, aren't I? And here she coyly batted her eyelashes at me. And here was where the conversational shift shifted, to her oncoming estrus cycle. Again.
Forgive me for asking, I tried as non-judgemental and casual a tone as possible, but just ... what ... kind ... particular ... particular kind ... what particular kind of combination ethnicity are you?
"Well", she said moving quite close, so that our bodies, or at least our legs were touching, and she did it quite smoothly, so I almost didn't notice, "well ... I am half hyena".
You remember how inarticulate I said muscle boy was? Well, that's how inarticulate I was at this point, but only at this point. Then she threw in the rest.
"I will be reaching estrus in about a minute and a half." Eyes batted, body undulated.
I wanted to ask her, so I did, if that's why she couldn't, wasn't, didn't seem much interested in the other fellow, after all, lions and hyenas never did get along too well.
And she said, and I quote, undulating a little more and eyelids beginning to look like those signal lights they use on ships, "it thertainly ith."
Now, I must tell you, I have another part of my ever-so-active brain that keeps a monitor on dreams, reminding me that I am dreaming. This is called the 'lucid dreamer', for those of you who care about such things. Well, when she answered me in that girly-girl lisp, my lucid dreamer kicked in, and told me that, yes, I was dreaming but to be very cautious. It also told me, that while maybe the lion part and the hyena part couldn't make a go of it, maybe the human parts could. On the other hand, was it possible for a human/human and a hyena/human? I thought not.
After all, I told myself in a Groucho Marx voice, a hyena is still a hyena.
Even when it's a lion hyena.
We were waiting for the train in Venice
after a winter week sipping Giudecca
at the Calcina?
I can’t recall.
I wrote a story at that window
framing Chiesa del Santissimo Redentore,
or Chiesa San Giorgio Maggiore,
a story starting
an opera ending
with a woman, singing
while Venice ends,
and Mestre ends
Lido ends,
and she, singing,
ends, falling
while sighing
into a filthy canal.
We were waiting for a train in Venice
After a winter week sipping Giudecca,
At the Calcina?
I can’t recall.
Murano sparkled,
glass chandeliers,
glass figurines,
glass shops,
with glass things
that just catch dust,
the glass museum,
glass dumpsters,
overflowing colors
from before time:
I heard an English voice
say “look at how pretty…oh…
it’s a skip!”
But it is pretty,
this mountain
glittering color,
and it was a skip, and a hop,
and a jump,
from Giudecca
to Murano.
And, there is a cemetery.
I ran my camera,
along narrow
Venice streets and closes,
acqua alta splashing,
bouncing on planks,
stretched brick to brick,
spotting sandbagged doors,
shutter clicking
I ran without aim,
before leaning palazzos
over tiny canal bridges,
I want to remember
the couple bickering,
is a child’s school
a place for learning,
or a madhouse,
the silhouette
an elderly couple make
strolling under
an ancient archway.
Then we waited for a train in Venice
After a winter week watching Giudecca,
At the Calcina?
I can’t recall.
A vaporetto conversation
about snow returned,
as it slanted downward,
a veil for Santa Lucia,
we waited,
and we waited,
watching the old-fashioned monitor
slowly flick destinations
upward until
our destination was lost
in the sky
and falling snow still fell.
I knew this opera
was nearly over,
its tragic beauty
veiled in Venetian snow,
while the lady’s song
reached crescendo.
We were waiting, the train from Venice
was very late, snow was falling
after a winter week of sun and Giudecca,
at Pensione Calcina?
I can’t recall.
