The Renter Next Door

The 1st draft of this essay is no longer available. A later version appeared Saturday, March 15th in the Daily Hampshire Gazette as a guest column.

PDF: luxury-saving-tree_080315.pdf

Praying in El Dorado

after Angela Marini

Looking out of the foggy, cracked window next to your side of the bed, you say the Partridges prancing on the gray-green hill above our yard make you happy. “How could they not?” you ask. “Have you ever seen a cooler looking bird?” The fact that yesteday we found a threadbare velvet chair on the curb, that you didn’t hit that deer last night, that we had the last of summer’s pesto for dinner and that you are home, safe, safe in our bed, is enough. What more can I ask, love? Your face this morning, creased from sheets and insomnia, is all. My arm under your head. Your breath against mine. You make the sentence sweet, sweeter, sweetest. Living at the edge of eternity and exile in a trailor park on this once-gilded land, we kiss like we just met. 

Turning

Sitting side-by-side in a crowded room,
the outsides of our thighs touching
as if it’s nothing,
the planet spins one thousand miles an hour.
Our wobbly table filled with small dishes, tamarind
and curry stings the noisy air we drink into our cells
and your laughter, for an instant, makes me lower my wine
to the table where it hovers above the steam
and spices while I turn to look at your smooth jaw a little too long
before turning away. Remembering my glass, I lift it
to my lips, staring into the red bulb
as if it’s my first
ever or last, as if this sip
seals a pact. All I can think about is the heat
moving along my skin where it meets you,
as if this could work.

Crosshatch

We did it again. Here we are: the old argument, your eyes and jaw tightening. Cut a chink in a stick for each offense. Strike four times: make four straight lines. Strike one more: cross out this set then start again. Each line multiplies like insects, like rain.

In a dream, I arrive home to find you sitting on the porch rail, balancing and drenched in full morning light. Waking, I remember to tell you. 

(after a painting by Nancy Rose)

Side Effects May Include Too-Frequent Laughter

After my last class of the semester, I gave myself the gift of starting a book purely for pleasure without any thought of teaching what I was reading. The pleasure in question: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. You wouldn’t think that reading about a twenty-one-year-old watching both parents die of cancer within five weeks of each other and then struggling to raise his eight-year-old brother as a single parent could be hilarious, but I laugh out loud on a too-frequent basis. This is the kind of book that can get you in trouble at the library, or even in bed, if your lover is trying to do anything at all besides read her own copy of the same book, which is highly unlikely and would make a bizarre scenario.

Wonderfully anti-literary in a passionate, darkly comic, forget-what-you-think-you-know-about-lit-because-now-you-can-do-anything-in-a-book kind of way, AHWOSG begins on the copyright page where the author describes his memoir as “a work of fiction only in that in many cases, the author could not remember the exact words said by certain people, and exact descriptions of certain things, so had to fill in the gaps as best he could.” One sentence later he adds, “Any resemblance to persons living or dead should be plainly apparent to them and those who know them, especially if the author has been kind enough to have provided their real names and, in some cases, their phone numbers.” While this is not a review, I’ve noticed that few reviewers comment on the copyright page, which also goes into a mini-rant about the “absolutely huge German company called Bertelsmann A.G. which owns too many things to count or track” including Random House which publishes Vintage Books such as AHWOSG. Eggers even provides his vital statistics, notes about his hands and allergies, and his placement on “the sexual-orientation scale” which goes from one to ten, “1 being perfectly straight, and 10 perfectly gay.” Curious to know what rating Eggers gives himself? Read the book!

I first ran into AHWOSG at an airport bookstore while waiting for a delayed flight and read much of its extensive front matter which includes Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of this Book (“the first three or four chapters are all some of you might want to bother with”) and then about thirty-seven pages of preface and acknowledgements which feature extensive deleted scenes, an explanation of why the author voted for Ross Perot in 1996, his budget for writing AHWOSG, and an Incomplete Guide to Symbols and Metaphors (“mother” appears ten times). Yes, I stood in the airport bookstore and read the book for about thirty minutes and then didn’t buy it because I feared it would distract me from researching my master’s thesis, which is exactly what I should have been doing with that spare time between flights.

I recommend AHWOSG if you’re looking for an entirely silly, anti-tragic, moving story from a guy who admits using the “Find” function in Word to avoid starting every sentence of dialogue with “Dude.” By the way, the book was a finalist for the Pulitzer.

Someone Missing?

This ad appeared next to an article titled “Clinton, Obama Dig In for Long Fight” at http://news.yahoo.com on January 9th, the day after Senator Clinton won the New Hampshire primary.

Difference & Politics

Yesterday my twelve-year-old daughter asked me who I will vote for in the upcoming Massachusetts primary and I wanted to know, wanted to give her a definitive answer, but couldn’t. Today, after reading Gloria Steinem’s opinion essay in the New York Times, I know. I plan to vote for Hillary Clinton, although I am angry with her.

A low-income, white, lesbian single mother and adjunct professor, I am also an anti-racist feminist strongly opposed to my countries war in Iraq. Senator Clinton’s initial support of the Bush Administration’s invasion profoundly disappointed me. However, the New York Times claims that she’s now opposed and promises to “start phased withdrawal within 60 days of taking office, with the goal to have most troops out by the end of 2013.” That’s not fast enough for many Democrats, myself included, but I question the intelligence of withdrawing all troops within 10 (Edwards) to 16 (Obama) months. As desirable as those numbers sound, they could also add up to a radical, dangerous plan which might seriously backfire on many levels—including another republican presidency. Keep in mind: all of the leading republican contenders are “against a timetable for troop withdrawal” (NY Times). Therefore, I believe that Clinton’s moderate stance is strategically smart from a military as well as political perspective. 

As a teacher known for addressing diversity issues, I have noted for my students the relevant precedent of African American men winning the right to vote long before women of any color won that same right, and the possibility that sexism in contemporary America could play a fascinating and disturbing role in the upcoming election. Clearly, Clinton is indeed fighting a damned if you do, damned if you don’t dynamic that none of the male candidates face. When Hillary spoke passionately yesterday about her personal conviction that this election is pivotal for the future of our nation and said that she’s running for President because she is deeply concerned about where we’re headed, I was amazed by the backlash she received for being “near tears.” On the contrary, her passion only reinforced my belief that her brilliance, experience and commitment make her the best candidate.  

However, like every other leading candidate, Hillary Clinton is against same-sex marriage. To quote her, “that hurts my feelings.” It is my hope that if elected, Clinton will evolve out of her current, discriminatory stance on this issue, just as she now opposes a war she helped to start.                 

Gloria Steinem’s final words, “We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman,” made me hesitate and question myself. I’ve been saying all along that I would not vote for Obama or Clinton on the basis of my desire to see a woman or person of color leading the country. As a youth, I ignorantly fancied myself “color-blind.” Now, I’m interested in the notion that instead of trying to ignore difference—like so many of my privileged, white, middle class students at the State college where I teach—Americans would do well to embrace all it has to offer. If I’m honest with myself, I would like to call Obama my president because his stance on a broad range of issues most closely resembles my own and because I respect and even love the difference that his background and resulting perspective would offer, which appears to include much-needed international as well as African-American influences. Similarly, I would like to call Clinton my president because I think she’s the strongest contender and because I respect and even love the difference that her perspective as a woman offers us as a nation. Like my students, I’ve been afraid to admit this—as if difference was something to try and not see, rather than learn from, and relish.